Trade In My Halo
by Artemisdesari
Summary: The Apocalypse is averted and Castiel is taken home to receive judgement, given six months as a human to ascertain whether Dean feels for him as he does for Dean. Dean/Castiel, season 5 spoilers. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

_So, no sooner do I finish my Verse, I start a new fic. This is another multi-chapter, but unlike the last one, I have only a few definite scenes that I am going to use and I'm undecided on an ending, still trying to think if I want the happy ending or not (for a change and all that). Since The Hand of Sorrow Verse lacked severely in Dean/Cas love, something that I was told off for, I am dedicating my energies to this. _

_A word of warning, rating may go up and there will possibly be season five spoilers, because I read them and get excited. This is set after season five, so will become a most definite AU within moments of being posted. Anyone else unbelievably excited for Thursday?  
_

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own them, really, I would love to though. At this point I have only got a laptop and a jar of coffee to my name, it is sad, but that would be life.  
_

Trade In My Halo

Chapter One: Opportunity.

Two months have passed since the Apocalypse was averted, two months since God locked Lucifer back into his cage. It has been eight weeks where the Earth has been gradually beginning to set itself right, to pull itself back together, and eight weeks that God has spent moving through the ranks of His Host finding those angels who blindly followed orders, those who _gave_ the orders and those who decided that the Apocalypse was a brilliant idea in the first place.

Two months should be little more than the blink of an eye to an angel. To Castiel, however, these two months have felt like an eternity. During that time he has waited, confined to Heaven with no contact with others of his kind and not even the smallest idea of what is happening, of what _has_ happened, to Dean Winchester since he has been gone.

It is frustrating, not knowing what has happened to Dean, but it has also given Castiel the opportunity to think on why he took the actions he did, on why he disobeyed, on the things that he _felt_ when he was helping Dean. The fact that, for the first time in his existence, he has felt real and has felt close to being complete and that feeling was not when he had seen his Father's face for the first time.

That feeling had been when he was with Dean. It is something that he had known long before now, long before he had been able to settle and think on the matter, but now he has had the chance, and two months is plenty of time for self reflection. Too much time, really, and Castiel has begun to put a name to the feelings that he has experienced, that he is still experiencing. Doubt, fear, pain, sorrow, grief, despair, happiness, joy, lust, _love_.

The last in that list has not gone away, he still feels it every hour of every day and it is not the love for his Father that so many expect him to feel, that he thinks he should hold, it is the love for another, for a man, for _Dean_. It hurts. It hurts and it should not and it hurts all the more when he thinks that he has been here, away from Dean, for two months even though he knows that the man could have no idea of the angel's true feelings.

So he has been here, waiting for the judgement of his Father, of his brothers, for two months and has not seen Dean, has not had word of him, he is nervous, he is on edge and then Michael comes for him, tells him that it is time, and Castiel does not know if he is eager to hear the judgement, or afraid. He follows his brother to his Father's side, is surprised when God commands that they be left alone.

There is no way to describe the peace that he feels in the presence of his Father, no way to describe the sight of Him, He simply _is_. When Castiel was taken back to Heaven, before he could say goodbye, before he could comprehend exactly what was happening, he was not taken from his body, a body that is not really a vessel anymore, given that Jimmy's true body was destroyed by the archangel, so he stands next to his Father, in a body that is borrowed but is not and awaits His word, awaits His judgement.

Castiel does not have to be told that his superiors are disappointed in him, he knows that already, knows it by the way that they look at him, the way that they avoid him at every turn, knows it because he has heard it more than once since he pulled Dean out of Hell, let alone over the last few months. Even though he has been torn between two things, torn between his feelings for Dean and his sense of duty since the day this all started, since he realised that Dean would not be cowed or pushed into doing what he ought, his superiors, unlike his Father, will not acknowledge that, they still want him punished.

Still, his position in the whole mess has not been enviable, and his Father has taken it into account even though the others would not, so he will not be punished, not severely, not to the degree that he should be for disobeying orders. Just as he will not be punished to the degree that he should be, he will not be rewarded either, at least, that is how it will appear, and it takes Castiel a while to understand that.

He says Castiel is loyal, even though the angel knows differently, knows that He knows it too. This is a front, an illusion, his Father protecting him from the words and judgements of his brothers and sisters who simply will not understand, who cannot ever know the truth. Castiel, and therefore God, knows that his actions were not out of loyalty, not completely anyway, they were because the angel cared, _cares_, about Dean, even if he did not know the true extent and depth of it at the time. The angel's actions were taken because some small part of him wanted to make Dean happy, make him proud, make him call the angel 'friend', and if that meant disobeying Zachariah, trying to prevent Sam from becoming a monster and fulfilling his destiny, then that was what Castiel would chose to do, every time.

As for finding God, in the most literal of ways, that was not out of loyalty either, not really. It was done because Castiel was afraid, feared the things that he was beginning to feel and a part of him had hoped that finding his Father and being close to him, would allow him to understand the emotions. Getting Lucifer locked back in his cage was only, really, the secondary reason and Castiel knows that it should have been his first thought.

His Father, however, had simply smiled, commented on how much he had grown, and turned His attention to the sticky problem of Lucifer, all the while berating Zachariah and others who had helped him, for trying to push the humans into something that they were not ready for. Castiel understands that, now he does anyway, they were cast from the paradise of Eden as the cost of their sins, they have to _earn_ the right to return Paradise once more. His Father had explained _that _at least.

So apparently, even an all knowing Father can stand to learn a few things and one of them seems to be that he made his angelic children capable of growing in such a way for a reason and while Lucifer did it all the wrong way, Castiel seems to have succeeded in starting out the right way. This is not the way that Castiel had allowed himself to imagine things would come to pass. At the very least he had expected to be cast into Perdition. God appears to have different plans and Castiel does not know whether to be relieved or worried about those.

So when his Father tells him that he is to reward his loyalty, Castiel cannot help the surprise that comes with that revelation, does not believe that he deserves such a thing when all is said and done. Nor will any of the others and his actions, though the right ones in the end, were not taken for the right reasons, not completely. This reward is not going to be without conditions, to the extent that when Castiel hears them, he almost believes that this will be more like a punishment.

The angel is to be given six months on Earth, six months where he will have the chance to ascertain whether or not Dean feels for him as he does for the man, six months to hear that declared freely, without coercion or knowledge of the consequences of action or inaction. Should Dean not return Castiel's feelings, or not admit to it, Castiel will return to Heaven and not see the man again, not even on the day that he dies and gains his entry to Heaven. If Dean _does_ feel the same, does admit to it, then Castiel will get to spend the rest of Dean's natural life, and an eternity in Heaven, at Dean's side.

The downside to all of this, is that Castiel will have to do it all as a human, no grace, no wings, no way to protect himself other than the skills he can learn and Dean's natural protective streak towards anyone he may care about, friendship or otherwise. To much of the Host the loss of grace, whether through choice or not, would be a punishment, an unacceptable one, but Castiel understands, knows, that he will never be able to convince Dean of the way that he feels if he is still an angel.

It does not make him any less afraid of it though and for a long moment he debates asking if he can refuse it, asking if he can simply watch over Dean as his guardian, watch as Dean finds love and happiness elsewhere and wait for him in the halls of Heaven. His Father makes it clear that this is not an option, Castiel will do this, as a reward and a punishment for his actions.

The binding of his grace, to remove it would cause him to fall and that is not the purpose behind this exercise, is painful, drags screams from a throat that is all too human and Castiel wonders at how his Father can allow this, how he can permit this agony. All the same, even through the pain, he knows why his Father is doing this, knows that it must also be the punishment that all others see.

He is still screaming when he lands, naked, on Earth and he is still half sobbing with the agony of it when the motel room door opens.

_To continue or not to, this is the eternal question._

_Artemis_


	2. Chapter 2

_Right, so I am not going to be updating this as regularly as the last verse that I wrote, I'm aiming for weekly at the moment purely because work is insane at the moment and so is my social/family life so I'm not getting as much time to write as I would like. If I get a chapter done sooner, though, it will go up, I'm not in the habit of sitting on my work. We'll be seeing little bits of their days rather than the entire things or even entire weeks, even the Winchesters with an angel in tow can have boring/dull days. Definite season 5 spoilers here where I can incorporate them, because they're fun.  
_

_Also, I'm doing something different, my readers get to chose the way this will all end. By that I mean I have three options (angst, angst and fluff): 1) Dean doesn't have the same feelings for Cas and Cas goes back to Heaven and never sees him again. 2) Dean feels the same way but doesn't admit it/realise it until after Cas has gone back, they meet in Heaven again when Dean dies. 3) Dean feels the same, admits it and they all live happily ever after._

_Get voting by PM or review!  
_

Chapter Two: Week The First.

**Wednesday**:

Dean has spent the better part of two months trying to find out what happened to the angels after Cas succeeded in finding God and persuading Him to step in and do what Dean could never be strong enough to do, to stop Lucifer from destroying the world, because Dean has to be honest, no matter his real intentions, these days his life is one long screw up. He also has to admit that, really, it is not angels, plural, that he is worrying about, but _an_ angel, singular, that is his main concern. Castiel, because that angel did a huge amount for him, more than he should have _ever_ asked for and the way they all got yanked back to Heaven as soon as God was done with Lucifer makes Dean worry that Castiel is being punished, again, for things that Dean asked him to do, _pushed_ him into doing.

He has hunted, God may have prevented the actual end of the world, but he has left all of the nasty creatures out there to be killed, has left Dean with a purpose other than searching for answers about Castiel, saving people, hunting things. Except that Dean neither wants or needs this purpose, not at the moment, not when his friend is out there or up there somewhere and Dean has no idea what is happening to him.

So when Dean wakes on a Wednesday night with the sound of screaming in his ears, his first thought is that it is simply another nightmare, another memory of Hell that he cannot and will not ever be able to really shake. Except that when he opens his eyes and sits bolt upright in bed, the screaming is still there and it is not many voices, like he is used to, but a single voice, pained and afraid. He does as he has been trained to since he was four years old, he reaches for a weapon and goes to the door.

He is not sure what he was expecting to find, not really, even with Sam beside him frowning and concerned about the noise, but he is _very _certain that Castiel curled in a ball and _naked_ was not it. Definitely, positively and absolutely _not it_. He knows that it's Cas, _really_ Cas, not entirely sure how, but he does, and the screams have become little more than whimpers and sobs now and he needs to get the angel into the motel room before the police arrive or someone else gets curious and comes out of their room, enough lights are on as it is.

So he tucks his gun into the back of his shorts, glances once at his brother, who apparently has bitchface number seven, 'what mess have you gotten us into now?', on and takes Castiel under the arms while Sam gets his feet and they carry the man into the motel room, laying him on Dean's bed, it being the one nearest the door, covering him with a blanket and then standing back to think of what to do.

Their first thought is of demons, they have had too many run ins and too many close calls for their minds _not_ to go there and there is a splash of holy water with the muttering of an exorcism that does little except make the angel stir a bit under the blankets. Eventually they conclude that there is little more that they can do until Castiel wakes up.

"Go to bed, Sam," Dean sighs, "I'll keep an eye on him." He cannot help but think of this as a moment of payback, payback for all the times that Cas watched him sleep, even though Dean knows that this is wildly different. Sam argues, of course he does, but there is a part of Dean, even with everything that they have all gone through together, that does not trust Sam to watch over the angel, he insists, settles himself in a chair and watches and listens until Sam's snore can be heard. It is familiar, safe, relaxing and Dean feels his eyes getting heavier until he, too, falls into a deep sleep.

**Thursday**.

When Castiel wakes it is a sensation that is both unfamiliar and utterly unsettling. He has never been unconscious before, has never slept, and the idea of waking up somewhere unfamiliar, covered with a scratchy blanket and mind blurred with the haze of slumber, is frightening.

He aches, too, the deep, bone searing ache of remembered pain. Disorientated and not recalling, he tries to reach into his grace to heal it, to fix the pain and the ache and close off the emotions that flicker on the edge of his awareness. There is nothing, no change, no grace, and panic, strange and disconcerting, begins to creep in as his breathing becomes laboured and he tries to bring himself upright.

Dean is there, then, green eyes concerned and wary, mistrust in his eyes that hurts in a way Castiel is incapable of describing fully. He does not touch, Dean that is, does not lay his hands on the former angel, and Castiel would say that it is fear of what he may do or be that prevents the man from making any form of physical contact.

He calms his breathing, the words of his Father beginning to churn in his mind now, punishment and reward that he cannot tell Dean about, not all of it anyway, of finding a way to ascertain whether Dean feels for him what he does for Dean and right now that is looking like an impossible task. Except that Dean found him, naked and screaming, in the parking lot, Dean took him in and gave him a bed to rest and recuperate, on some level he must care, Castiel hopes that he does.

He sits up, feels the way that the muscles work for the first time since he took a vessel, the sensation always muted by grace in the past, looks around him and lets his eyes fall on Sam. Once he is upright Castiel's initial realisation it that while both the Winchesters are fully clothed, he is still naked and that is evidently something that both men a slightly uncomfortable with. Nudity is a concept that Castiel has never really considered before, he clearly has a lot to learn.

"Cas?" His attention returns to Dean who is still wary, who still appears troubled by the way that Castiel appeared and the former angel _wants_ to reassure him, he really does, but cannot find a way to do so without telling the human both plan and conditions. Such an act would most likely result in him being dragged away again without explanation, so he keeps silent, still trying to process the events of the previous day as it is.

"Cas, what happened?" Even though the question is in Dean's eyes, it is Sam who asks it.

"I..." he hesitates, trying to find a way to give them some sort of understanding about the situation without giving away all of his feelings and thoughts, without outright lying to them. "My grace, He... took my grace, bound it," the sentence makes little sense, seems to Castiel to be little more than incoherent babbling as he raises a hand to the sunlight, _his_ hand. "I am human." The words are uttered with wonder, even as the faces of both brothers darken in something like anger, like rage.

"Why?" Dean demands and the anger is a shock to Castiel. "Why would He do that?"

It takes the former angel a moment to understand why Dean is upset by this. For as long as he has existed Castiel has been an angel, certainly not the most powerful but an angel nonetheless, his grace is a key part of that. Grace, faith and obedience are the three central parts of being an angel, without any one of these three they become something else. It should scare him but somehow it does not and Castiel suspects that it is more the injustice that Dean perceives in the act than the actual loss of grace.

"I disobeyed, Dean, it does not matter the reason, and I must be punished for that," the tremble in his voice is another surprise, the ease with which he is telling the half truths only marginally less of one. "The angels will see this as a punishment and _that_ is what matters."

It is, really, what matters, that this is seen as a punishment because in a way it is. Not only is Castiel going to have to find a way to discover whether or not Dean feels for him as he does for the human, to risk rejection whilst hoping for exactly the opposite, the former angel also has to learn _how_ to be human. _That_ he realises, is the punishment.

**Friday**

They spent the majority of the previous day trying to work out exactly _how_ human Castiel has become, it turns out that the transformation is almost complete. The thought worries Sam, and if Sam is worried, Dean is almost frantic, the older hunter has barely let Castiel out of his sight.

Sam understands it, he really does, because Castiel cannot protect himself anymore, the world is still full of demons and evil and on some level, because this is just the way that his brother is, Dean blames himself for this whole mess. Sam wishes that he would not.

The younger man, however, cannot help but wonder if there is more to the whole thing than Castiel is telling them, cannot decide whether Cas is being deliberately evasive about the whole thing or if he is just as ignorant as the human men he has been left with. One thing is certain, no matter the motivation here, they cannot leave the angel to wander the Earth graceless and alone. He does not know what they are going to do until they figure this out, but Dean has promised that they will and Sam has agreed with that, which means that he has some serious research to do.

He may as well get started while Dean insists on teaching Cas about the wonders of pie.

**Saturday**

So far Sam has found nothing on how to restore Castiel to what he once was and for the moment, Dean is alright with that. He knows that these things take time and that they have only been at it for a little over forty eight hours. What he also knows is that the longer that this drags on, the more depressed Cas will become.

At the moment the angel, former angel Dean figures, is fascinated by his new position, his new place in the order of the universe. They have been cautious, made too many mistakes in the past, laced his drinks with holy water and walked him through devil's traps, asked Cas questions that he would be the only one to know the answers to and just generally watched him.

It is the little things that tell Dean that this really is the angel that pulled him from Hell. Things like the way that Castiel always touches things, the little frown when he reads a book, the awkward way that he moves as he tries to adjust to the new limitations on his body, limitations that are far greater now than they were when he was simply cut off from on high. This is not to imply that Castiel does not know anything about being human, he seems to know far more than he ever let on, but then it is amazing what knowledge you assimilate simply through watching, Sam's words not Dean's, and the hunter knows that they are going to have to be careful while they try to work this out and send Cas home.

This is not to imply that Dean has not missed Castiel, he _has_, missed the way that Cas would simply appear unannounced, the tilt of his head when he became confused by Dean's words and behaviour. The angel did a lot for them, became an almost constant presence and a buffer between the brothers when they had their darker moments, this is exactly why Dean thinks that he deserves to go home, because as much as Dean has missed Castiel's quiet friendship and support, he feels that this is all his fault somehow and they have to fix it.

He does not stop to consider that Castiel may want differently.

He takes Cas out to buy clothes, the fallen angel cannot continue to wear theirs, and flirts with the cashier when he pays, the familiar exercise relaxing after the tension of the last couple of days. He is not completely successful, but since he had not set out to be so, he does not really mind it and leaves the store, Cas in tow, a whole lot more cheerfully than he had entered it.

When Zepplin's Heartbreaker blares out of his pocket, he thinks for a foolish moment that maybe Sam has actually found an answer. It is not his brother, it is Bobby. Wheelchair bound now, and that is just something else that Dean blames himself for, Bobby does not so much hunt as he tracks the hunt down, takes the calls, and then hands them out to any hunters who may want them. Dean's immediate thought is to refuse the hunt, he even goes so far as to explain to the older man what has happened, to tell him about Cas except kids are involved and he cannot turn his back on that. He agrees to leave in the morning.

**Sunday**.

Castiel has been on hunts with the Winchesters before, back when the Apocalypse was coming and Lucifer was free and the hunters were still hiding from all the angels in creation, back when he had his grace, weak as it was, at his command. He is not sure what they hope to accomplish by bringing him with them, because he is still learning, has been human for four days and is still unsure _what_ he can do with this new body.

Still, he is grateful that they have let him come with them rather than giving him some money and letting him fend for himself and that thought shames him, because he knows Dean better than that, Sam too. They would not leave him alone and defenceless and still discovering humanity.

This is familiar, though, the travelling, the comfortable silence between brothers and the music that Dean plays a little more softly when he has Castiel in the car, Castiel thinks that it is Metalllica, certainly Sam had pulled a face at it when Dean had slid the tape in. The falling angel does not mind the music, is not the wild fan of it that Dean is or wants everyone to be, but he can listen to it without Sam's irritation. What matters, here, is that the familiar is comforting and he can relax into it, can stop worrying, for a moment, that Sam will find a way to do as Dean has promised and send Castiel back to Heaven, because that is where Dean thinks that he wants to be after so long an absence.

Castiel wonders if he should tell Sam that he does not want to return even though watching Dean flirt with every half attractive female he comes across hurts more than he can admit, he still would not return home until he is certain that there is no hope. He has hope, he has faith, that his Father would not have allowed this if there was not some remote chance that it will work out the way that Castiel wants it to, has faith that his Father would not have sent him here to get his heart broken, that He is not that cruel.

So he sits in the back of the car, listens to Dean singing along to his music and the way that the buttons on Sam's phone click as he researches, sees the way that Dean's eyes flick up to the rearview mirror as he drives them south, makes sure that Castiel is still there and still alright and that gives Castiel hope as well.

He lets the music and the hope and the feeling of safe familiar wash over him as he watches the countryside roll past the window, head against the cool glass and breath creating a misty film there, until he falls into a light doze that will shock him when he wakes several hours later. This sort of half fall is exhausting, however, and his body is not accustomed to travelling or living in general, so he lets the need to rest creep up on him, lets sleep claim him while the car eats up the miles smoothly and Dean sings off key and Sam smiles indulgently.

He does not even half wake when he realises that this is the lightest he has ever seen the hunters, rather the thought warms him and drags him still deeper into rest.


	3. Chapter 3

_I may not be able to get to put this chapter up on Monday, so I'm putting it up now and then the next one should come on Thursday next week. I'm well aware that I'm going up against our Show, I don't particularly mind, people will get to it eventually. Voting from the last chapter is still open, I don't need to have come to a decision for a few chapters yet._

_**WARNING: This chapter contains imagary of graphic violence and potentially disturbing scenes** (It is taken directly from one of my nightmares, trust me it's not nice)  
_

Chapter Three: Week the Second.

**Monday**.

Sam stretches, arms rising high above his head as he works out the kinks in muscles that are burning from his having spent too long hunched over a computer researching. He is alone at the moment, Dean has taken Castiel with him to question the families of the victims leaving Sam in peace for a while.

Sam sighs at that, Dean hates cases that involve kids, seems to take them personally, he thinks it is because Dean hates the loss of young life. At the moment, however, he is keeping quiet, bottling all of his frustrations in a way that annoys Sam and he thinks that this may be for Castiel's sake more than anything.

The angel seems to be dealing well with everything and Sam doubts that it has really hit home yet exactly what has happened to him because the younger hunter knows that if it had been _him_ in this position he would be seriously freaking out. At the moment, however, Castiel simply seems to be enjoying the new experiences that he is gaining as a human, although sleep is something that he is finding difficult to accept. In fact, aside from his impromptu nap in the car the day before, Cas fights it at every turn.

As for finding a way to get him home, Castiel is doing little to help with that, answers questions reluctantly, and it makes Sam wonder if the angel even _wants_ to go back to Heaven. He has to question that, has to ask _why_ Cas would be so eager not to go back. Still, he supposes that everything that the angel went through at the hands of his family must have something to do with it.

Dean, on the other hand, is pushing. Every few hours he asks for an update on what Sam has found, which is nothing by the way, and Sam knows that it is not because he wants Castiel gone, the angel has always been quiet and unintrusive in the past, it is simply that Dean does not like the idea of Cas not being able to defend himself without his mojo, does not like the idea that this whole situation might be his fault. Sam is beginning to think that they may have to just let this one play out on its own.

The plan for the moment is for them to get through this job, which is starting to look less and less like something supernatural and more like a psychotic murderer on the loose, then they can throw themselves into trying to help Castiel any way that they can. This includes going to Bobby's place, now a secluded bungalow rather than the salvage yard which he was forced to sell after the loss of the use of his legs. Bobby and Cas do not exactly see eye to eye, but at the moment he is the only one that they will trust to help them.

The motel room door crashes open as Dean returns, food in hand, and he begins to talk about the case as he munches his way through his fries, tells him that they are going to see the bodies tomorrow and then mentions that if they get this wrapped up, he has a date. In Dean speak 'I have a date' roughly translates to 'I'm going to get blind drunk and have lots of sex'. Sam does not miss the hurt expression on Castiel's face as Dean mentions the waitress, notices the way that the angel turns and goes to sit on one of the beds. The fallen angel buries his nose in a book but Sam can see that it is a pretense.

"Cas, you not gonna listen to this?" Dean asks, pausing long enough to glance at the angel.

"I was there, Dean, and there is research to do," Cas's tone is frosty and Dean pulls a face but does not comment on it, just rolls his eyes at the angel. Sam files it away, however, as something else that he needs to keep an eye on, even if he has not yet decided what it is that he is watching for.

**Tuesday**.

Castiel has been quiet since he fell, quieter still since Dean had flirted with the waitress the day before. Dean knows that a night of no strings attached sex probably goes against Castiel's nature and upbringing and he figures that is why the angel is being quieter even than usual. Actually he cannot think of another reason, unless Cas is finally beginning to experience some form of depression due to his forced fall.

His concern at the moment, however, is not the date, or Castiel's cool demeanor, his main concern is the case, is in proving that this is nothing more than some weird human and the proof of that lies in the examination of the bodies. With the FBI, the real ones, on their way it has to be done today.

So they make their way to the coroners office, Dean and Castiel, leaving Sam in the motel room to continue doing his thing. Getting in is remarkably easy, Dean does not question it, his luck rarely runs smoothly and he will take what he can get, what he sees when he is in there threatens to overwhelm him, he understands why it has been kept out of the news.

The three bodies that are still in the morgue have been mutilated, demonic sigils cut into their faces and chests, they are symbols that Dean recognises from his time in the pit. That is not the worst of it, that those symbols took three days to be carved into the children, the worst of it is the rest of it, the way that their hands and feet have had the bones removed, carefully, each one sliced out with the kind of precision that only comes from long practice.

It is work that he recognises well, from both his own experience and having watched it done to others when he was learning. He cannot help the bile that rises in his throat and he barely registers the sympathetic look thrown his way before he is out of the room, out of the building even, and emptying the contents of his stomach into a trash can in an alleyway.

Castiel joins him several minutes later, Dean does not know what he told the people inside, does not really want to know, is only aware of the overwhelming need to _get the hell out of town._ Cas does not say anything, does not need to, because Dean figures that the angel probably already knows, being the one who pulled him out of Hell and everything. It takes a lot to make Dean physically ill, at least on a job, but knowing that _she_ is here and doing this, it is enough.

**Wednesday**.

Dean did not go on his date the night before, something for which Castiel is profoundly grateful. He is not naive enough to have thought that it would be easy to ascertain whether or not Dean felt the same things for him, but to know that he is willing to fornicate with these women so openly actually hurts more than Castiel thinks it should have a right to.

Instead of going out Dean got very drunk, this is also something that Castiel has seen the man do before, particularly when his memories of Hell had become too much for him. Since he was more focussed on the nearest bottle of whiskey, and Castiel may disagree with the use of that method to cope with all the things that have happened but he can understand the reasoning, it fell to Castiel to give Sam the details on what they had seen. He does not tell Sam why it has affected Dean this badly.

He does not need to, however, because it is quite possible that Sam has already guessed from the way that Dean drunk himself into unconsciousness the night before and is now studiously avoiding the subject.

Castiel has not actually slept, has been more preoccupied with keeping one eye on Dean while he slept the sleep of the intoxicated and the other in his memories, thinking about the time he went to Hell to pull Dean out. He has never before felt such horror and shuts the memories down as quickly as he can.

So with Dean hung over, Sam worried and Castiel cranky from lack of sleep, a new sensation, exhaustion, and one that he does not like in the slightest, the atmosphere in the room is tense.

"So it's a demon," Sam says finally, shutting the laptop down and turning his attention to Castiel. The look Dean throws the angel is one of betrayal that fades a little when Castiel responds.

"I believe so, the sigils were ancient and I find it difficult to believe that any human would know of them." He keeps his head bowed, his eyes averted, wills Dean to believe that he has not told Sam what he saw when he rescued him, has not told Dean about that partnership.

"So we find it and kill it," Sam frowns at the reluctance that is there on both sides and Castiel knows that he cannot possibly understand this, cannot understand Dean's fear of this demon and just how ancient she is. So Castiel shakes his head, looks at Dean to see if he has anything to say on the matter, but he is packing his bags.

"We leave town, demon'll be gone now anyway she won't stick around once she knows I'm here," Castiel turns his eyes Heaven ward, for the first time experiencing a desire to have his grace under his command so that he could track the demon down and destroy her, the desire sends something in his mind skittering backwards, he knows that it is too soon for him to feel the loss of his grace as keenly as he does in this moment and he has to hope that it is the sleep deprivation that is causing this.

Sam glances between them, Castiel with his silent nod of agreement and Dean with his frantic packing of bags, the angel knows that he is aware of the fact that he is not entirely in the loop here, knows that Sam will find it difficult to understand why Dean cannot tell him about this demon, in the same way that he found it hard to talk about Alistair.

Sam follows where they lead, does not ask questions and for that Castiel is grateful, because he does not know if he will be able to deny the younger Winchester the answers.

**Saturday**.

Sam is beginning to get frustrated, _very_ frustrated. Not only have they bailed out on a job because Dean freaked out but they have been driving since Wednesday afternoon, Dean has barely slept and Castiel is no better, only sleeping when he can no longer keep his eyes open and waking a few hours later spooked and jumpy.

They reach Bobby's just before dark and Sam allows himself to hope that with the support of the older hunter he will finally get some answers. Given that the other man's response when Sam had told him that they were on their way and the circumstances behind it, he knows that he is not wrong. The only redeeming factor is that since they have left town there has not been another body found, has not been another disappearance.

Dean avoids the issue, though, says that he is tired and needs to rest and given the dark circles under his eyes and the haggard look in them, Sam does not have the heart to deny him it even if he knows that Dean's words are a lie because a part of him hopes that Dean will get a little rest. Castiel is packed off to rest too, though he says that he would rather do some research, and Sam knows that has nothing to do with finding a way back to Heaven and everything to do with a way to help Dean. He and Bobby both refuse to accept that as an answer and send him to bed.

They both settle into the kitchen, let the silence of the house wash over them, knowing that the peace will not remain and Sam lets a little of his annoyance at Dean and Castiel show. He has been shut out, kept out of the loop by both his brother and his brother's former angel and he is tired of it. Sam is well aware that whatever it is about this demon that has upset Dean so will probably hurt him to talk about and as much as Sam hates causing that, he hates this not knowing more. Worse than that, however, worse, is that he has realised that there are things about his brother that he does not know, things that he thinks he should know and these things seem to be known by Castiel. That hurts, because if any one of Dean's family and friends should be told about these things, surely it is Sam.

Bobby does not argue with that, but nor does he openly agree, he simply wants to know what has gotten Dean so freaked so that he knows whether to yell at the fool boy or feel some amount of sympathy for him. Were Sam not so annoyed with the whole mess he would probably feel the same way.

They catch up, Sam tells Bobby how much better Dean was before this case, so much more himself without the weight of the world and the guilt of Hell on his shoulders. He tells Bobby how nice it has been to travel with a brother who is lighter and more free, even with his concern about Castiel. Somehow, just knowing that there is something good out there has helped Dean in a way that neither Sam nor Bobby have been able to. The emergence of this demon seems to have undone all of that.

"Your brother is most infuriating," Castiel announces as he joins them. The angel looks no better for the hour or so he has been absent, rather he looks annoyed and more than a little fed up.

"You're just _now_ figuring this out?" Bobby asks in response and Castiel shakes his head. Sam has to laugh at that, at the simple aggravation that the angel, former angel, is displaying.

"It doesn't get any better," he tells Castiel as the angel sits. "You know what's going on with Dean, don't you?"

"It is not my burden to share, I only wish he would share it." Sam's heart sinks at the angel's voicing of the same thoughts that have been rolling around his own mind.


	4. Chapter 4

_To start moving it all along now and this is the final week that I can keep the poll open, so will it be one, two or three? Angst, happy/angst or happiness? Because there is angst a plenty ahead. _

_I just want to say thank you to all my reviewers, I think this is the most that I have gotten at the beginning of a fic.  
_

Chapter Four: Week the Third.

**Tuesday**.

Dean has managed to avoid Sam and Bobby's questions for two days, mainly by tinkering with the car, helping Castiel train, and pretending to sleep in the evenings, he knows that it cannot continue and eventually they will stage their version of an intervention. Cas seems happy to leave him to it, voiced his opinion on the matter on the night that they arrived and was shot down, although Dean knows that both Bobby and Sam have been pressing him for information that he has so far refused to give.

Normally they would not leave it this long, except that Dean is still having nightmares and hitting the bottle and he suspects that neither one of them is sure how to broach the subject without Dean taking off as quickly as he can. So when the three of them corner him, Bobby in his wheelchair, Sam in one doorway and Castiel in the other, Dean cannot help but feel a little betrayed. At least Cas looks uncomfortable about the whole thing, Bobby and Sam have their determined faces on and there is no getting out of this now, so he flops onto the couch and glares.

For a long moment no one says a word, no one needs to because they all know why they are there and finally Cas, of all of them, Castiel breaks the silence.

"This needs to stop, Dean, they have a right to know." He crosses and sits on the couch, not next to Dean, but at the opposite end and for just a moment Dean considers clocking him. Only for a moment, because Bobby is glaring at him in the way that shows that he is clearly worried about him and Sam is throwing the kicked puppy eyes in his direction and Dean always has trouble saying no to those.

So he takes a breath, tries to find the words to describe exactly who this demon is, how he knows her, looks once at Castiel who nods his support but knowing what he is about to tell them he cannot face Sam or Bobby, cannot look in their eyes and see pity or horror or disgust.

"I don't know her name, Alistair never told me, she was one of his students, I guess, a favourite and," he pauses, feels all three sets of eyes burning into him, does not want to continue but now the door is opened and things that he has kept bottled up are ready to start spilling out, "he used her. Used her to torture me a few times, used her to teach me. She was an artist, you know, her work was just... She liked to take the bones out of feet and hands. It would take her hours, days, and the whole time she would talk to them, screw with their heads. Alistair partnered us for a while, left us to learn from each other and..." he cannot say anymore, cannot tell them that the sigils that have been carved into too young chests are a mockery of some of the work _he_ did. A message to him that she is going to find him and take her revenge for the death of her master, for Dean's escape.

"It was how I found him, with her," Castiel cuts in, blue eyes lingering on Dean's face for a long moment and Dean _knows_ that Cas is well aware of the meaning behind the carvings. "She is by far the most vicious demon I have ever gone up against, not the most powerful but that is not always important."

"Sending her back?" Bobby asks, there is a sick note in his voice and even though Dean knows that Bobby is aware Dean broke in Hell, broke the first seal, he does not think that Bobby has ever thought through the meaning of that fully. It fills him with shame and he closes his eyes as Castiel answers, taking over and seemingly willing to try and protect him. Dean does not even have the strength to be angry about that.

"Will be difficult, my experience of her shows she is resourceful." Dean huffs a laugh at that, knows how resourceful she really is, and Bobby asks Cas to go with him, to help him with some research and make a few suggestions, leaving Dean and Sam alone to sit in awkward silence because Sam does not quite know what to say on the matter.

For one fleeting moment, Dean really wishes that it was Cas who had stayed with him instead.

**Wednesday**

Blood stained fingers trace gently down the muscular torso of the man strapped to a simple wooden table. Green eyes stare up at a woman with glossy auburn hair and grey eyes so pale that they are almost white as pained whimpers escape from his lips each time she brushes against the still weeping lines of sigils that have been carved into living flesh. Once she has finished tracing the marks, the woman picks up her knife once more, trailing the thin blade of the scalpel down the man's body until she reaches his feet.

His whispered pleas and agonised yells as she cuts into him are the finest symphony to ears conditioned over uncounted centuries in one of the deepest strongholds of Hell. As she works, she smiles, eyes flickering to all consuming black and tongue darting out to lick away stray drops of blood as they splash near her mouth.

It takes hours to cut all of the bones from one foot, hours longer to finish the second and all the while she hums as she works, hums lullabies and loves songs, smiling each time a bone is dropped onto a steal tray with a muffled clink. By the time she is finished, he is dead from shock. She does not care, this one does not overly matter, and she summons one of the demons who follow her to take the body and dump it somewhere that Dean Winchester will hear about it.

The original plan was to throw him off balance, to use her skills and a mockery of his to scare him and to let him know that she is looking for him, that she is coming for him. Plans have a habit of changing, however, and this time, she likes the way that it has gone. Dean's angel is back on Earth and this time he does not have his grace. If cutting into Dean will be satisfying, taking his angel and marking him with demonic rites will be more so, it is a feeling that she can hardly wait to experience, but she has spent a seeming eternity in Hell, a few months top side are nothing.

**Thursday**.

Castiel takes a sip from his mug of scalding hot coffee, take the time to enjoy the feel of the warm liquid as it slides down his throat. Coffee, he has decided, is quite possibly one of the greatest inventions of mankind, in fact, he has found a great number of things to _like_ about being human.

He has also found things to dislike about being human and one of those things is sleep. He cannot find anything to enjoy about it, dislikes the way that his mouth feels dry when he wakes, the disorientation as he tries to work out where he is, the vulnerability of being unconscious in such a way. Most of all, however, he hates the way that dreams are beginning to seep in.

The falling angel is not accustomed to dreaming, to the assault of random images and memories playing out in his mind as he sleeps that flicker just out of reach and then slither away entirely never to be regained. It is that loss that scares him, something that he has never experienced before, so he tries to keep himself in a place where such loss will not be a problem, he tries to stay awake.

He keeps himself occupied during the long night hours by recording all of his knowledge, symbols and traps, exorcisms and spells, that have been lost over the thousands of years he has existed when the hunters who possessed them died without ever being able to pass it all on. So he writes and he draws and all the time his hands are steady, even when he is drawing and explaining the creation of those symbols to be used against his own kind. He knows that one day, when mankind is ready, Lucifer will rise again and the hunters will not be ready if they do not know how to defend themselves.

Some nights he manages to stay awake all night and through the next day. Tonight, however, he has been awake for two days and try as he might he cannot keep his eyes open, cannot keep the lines on the page straight. By two a.m. he is asleep over the paper.

**Friday**.

Sam finds Castiel asleep in the study. This is not an unusual place to find the fallen angel, it is not even unusual to find him awake here still writing feverishly as he tries to record everything that he thinks he should. That he is sleeping, bent awkwardly over the desk with a line of pen on his cheek where he has shifted, is more unusual. Sam knows that Cas does not like sleep, has not pressed to find out why because he really would not have the first clue how to go about it.

Castiel is about as unlike Dean as they come, with Dean it is easy to tell if Sam needs to bully his way into getting an answer or if a gentle insistence to have them will be enough. With Cas neither option seems to work and Dean is no help anyway, the man would rather have his teeth pulled than talk about feelings most days. Be that as it may, Castiel needs to get into regular sleeping patterns if they are going to start hunting again, and as much as Sam knows that it is probably a monumentally _bad_ idea to start dragging a graceless angel around with them on hunts, he cannot think of anything else to do. Even after nearly three weeks on Earth as a human, Cas still does not seem to have any desire to return to how he was. Sooner or later they are all going to have to accept that.

For now, Sam wakes Castiel, has not missed the way that he whimpers a little or the fact that he flinches away from Sam violently when he hears his name. It makes Sam wonder what he dreams about. So he asks, about the dream and the not sleeping, receives a stare that is not quite as impassive as it once was.

"I don't remember," he replies, shrugs, "and sleeping is difficult for me, I will grow accustomed to it."

Sam lets the matter drop, until later when he asks for Bobby's advice.

"He probably just don't think it's necessary yet," the older man tells him as Sam makes coffee for the both of them while Dean tries to teach Castiel a little hand to hand in the yard, even without his angel mojo, Cas is more than holding his own. "Maybe you should take him to see Eden, see if she can get the answers out of him."

"Dean doesn't like Eden," Sam disagrees because he knows that Dean will, the younger Winchester has nothing against the psychic.

"I didn't ask if _Dean_ liked her," Bobby pulls a face, "I said to take that idjit angel to her, he likes her well enough, he might tell her what's bugging him."

"I don't know, Bobby, I mean we're trying to keep this as quiet as possible," Sam sets a mug of coffee in front of his friend and sit at the kitchen table with his own in hand.

"That may be, but in truth, I think the travel will do him some good and maybe some hunts will take it all out of him enough to _make_ him sleep." Sam nods, the plan has merit and even if they do not go to see Eden, as much as Sam would _like_ to see her again, a few hunts will probably help. Besides, Dean is beginning to get an itchy trigger finger again and who knows, a few hunts may get him sleeping normally again too.

Dean and Cas join them a few moments later, the hunter helping himself to a beer from Bobby's fridge and throwing a bottle of water to Castiel as he does so. It amazes Sam how quickly these two seem to have gotten accustomed to living together, how Dean just seems to acknowledge what Cas would prefer to drink after the work out in a similar way to how he would with Sam. In a way it makes Sam wish that they did not have to find a way to send Castiel back.

"Hey, Cas," Sam decides to bite the bullet with both of them here, blue eyes turn on his expectantly, "how about going to see Eden for a few days?" He sees Dean tense out the corner of his eye, knows that Castiel will have seen it too and silently hopes that he will not take that to heart.

"I would like to, but Dean..." He is cut off.

"Dude! No, if you want to go and see her, we'll go. I mean, she might be able to help you right?" Dean is smiling at him, but he sounds a little too eager, a little too false in it and Sam wonders if Castiel going back is really what Dean wants now.

The fallen angel flinches, almost imperceptibly but Sam know that Bobby sees it from the frown on the older hunters face, and then nods, the corner of his mouth tilting up a little in the faintest hint of a smile. For some reason that worries Sam all the more.


	5. Chapter 5

_So I have some time off work, I wrote most of this today and given that this is the longest chapter you should be impressed by that. This will be the first of our big time jumps (there will be others) because, quite simply, the weeks in between are not all that important. Again thanks out to my reviewers!_

Chapter Five: Week The Seventh.

**Thursday**.

Dean does not like Eden, this is something that his brother, friend and surrogate father are all aware of, he knows it well enough and he also knows that it is completely irrational. Unfortunately it is also the reason that it has taken them three weeks to reach the point where they are finally coming to a halt in her drive.

During said time, Dean has done everything that he can to avoid going near her home town, a peeved ghost here, a werewolf there and even a ghoul, which is one thing that Dean is on the verge of swearing _never_ to hunt again. The ghoul is the reason they are here, the reason because Cas got hurt and as if Dean did not feel bad enough about, well, everything really, he now has this to add to it all, the fact that if he had simply made good on his promise and taken them straight to see Eden, none of this would have happened.

Still, it does not change the fact that Castiel got stabbed by the creature, does not change the fact that they got lucky and Castiel remembered his training and managed to only get caught in the arm, but the fact remains that he will be out of commission for a while and what better time to visit with a psychic than when at least one of them is walking wounded.

When Dean allows himself to be honest, which is rare enough where other people are concerned let alone the times that he lets his own mind acknowledge the truth, he has to admit that putting this off has not been so much about his dislike of Eden, because he has disliked people badly enough in the past and still put it behind him to do the job, and more about the fact that he is scared that she _will_ know of a way to fix this. Dean has come to realise that he does not want Castiel to go back, what he has not managed to work out yet, and he knows that he should care but cannot bring himself to look at it, is _why_ he wants Cas to stay.

He keeps quiet about it, pretends that he likes having the third pair of eyes and hands on a job, acts like all of this is just a stopgap measure until they can complete the task they have set themselves and send Castiel home and all the while he ignores the nagging feeling in his gut that tells him that sending Cas back up to Heaven will be the greatest mistake of his life, because there is no way that the angel can possibly have realised what has really happened to him yet and when he does Dean knows how that will go.

Castiel once told him that he had lost everything for Dean, the hunter figures that the angel really has now.

He drags his thoughts away from Castiel as he gets out of the car, Sam already on the doorstep and pressing at the bell and Cas is lingering behind a little, like he is nervous and Dean guesses he has a right to be. Eden is much like Missouri, feeling the shift and twist of surface thoughts and emotions to read a person even though she has a greater feel for the spirit world on top of that, a greater feel for _angels_, which is why they came to her during the apocalypse in the end, the reason that Castiel likes her even though Dean cannot stand her.

The hunter does not dislike her for being psychic, does not dislike her simply because he is being contrary and refuses to like a girl that Cas might. Dean dislikes her because every time he meets her brown eyes he sees the pity of one who has seen the hell in his mind but fails to completely understand it. If there is one thing that Dean really dislikes being on the receiving end of, it is pity from _anyone_.

She is not in the slightest bit surprised to see them, Dean suspects that is something to do with Sam, her hand resting lightly on the back of her large mongrel as she looks them all over, head twitching slightly when she meets Dean's eyes and all out frowning when she sees Castiel. The doorstep is not the place to say anything, however, and she invites them in, dog trotting at her heals, growling at Sam and licking Dean's hand as he passes.

The older hunter may dislike the owner, but the dog is a creature that he likes perfectly well. So even though Dean does not like the woman, they spent a great deal of time with her when they were trying to find a way to stop Lucifer and Castiel had been the one who had been in the house the most. Castiel liked her because she did not fight with him about his idea, because she treated, still does treat, him with instant respect and perhaps, Dean thinks, he likes her enough to let her help him.

The former angel needs the help, if not in getting home then at least in getting some sleep. Part of Dean knows that Castiel would likely tell him if he asked, except that Dean would rather have all of his teeth pulled than get into a deep heart to heart with Cas. Not because he does not care, but because he is afraid he will not know _how_ to help him should he ask for the help and the last thing that Dean wants to do is let his friend down.

Dinner, she tells them, is almost ready and they all settle around her kitchen table, set for four as she serves up large bowls of a hearty stew. Dean almost complains about the simple, healthy, dish that is set in front of him, but decides against it. They need her to help Castiel and if he needs to hold his tongue until she has had the chance to give them a response, he will keep quiet. A curt nod in his direction tells him that she has heard and acknowledged his opinion on the food and that she does not much care for it. The food is eaten in almost silence and Dean figures it is because no one really knows what to say about why they are really here.

Eventually she sets her fork to one side, waits while Sam and Dean both finish as Castiel still pushes his food around the bowl and this is also a new habit that the former angel has picked up. With the dark rings under his eyes that show how little he sleeps and the way that he is losing weight as he simply loses the desire to eat, Dean is beginning to really worry about the angel.

"I can't help you," she says when Castiel pushes his plate away, "I'd like to but I don't know that kind of thing. I'm sorry." There is a moment of silence as they all digest her words. "Look there may be something in some of the books I have, why don't you and Cas go take a look, Sam, Dean and I can clear up." Her tone is one of a woman who will not take no for an answer and obediently the others trudge out and leave them alone in the kitchen.

They work in silence, no love lost between them, and Dean's fear that she is going to demand answers and some kind of heart to heart begin to lessen. There is not much to clean up, the bowls, glasses and cutlery from dinner and they make quick work of it between them. When she does speak it is when he is about to leave the room.

"Do both of you a favour, think about why you don't really want him to go back, then find out why _he_ doesn't want to. You might find that the reasons are remarkably similar." He wants to tell her to mind her own damn business, that Cas is his friend and that makes it _his_ job to help him. He keeps his mouth shut, because confronting her now will mean confronting the reasons that he does not want Castiel to leave and he is not ready to do that, not just yet.

From the way that she smiles, however, he thinks that she may just know more about the whole thing than he does. That worries him.

**Friday**.

Castiel has been given a room of his own, _again_. He finds it hard to sleep in this kind of silence, away from the now familiar sounds of Dean and Sam as they rest, snores and sleeping murmurs that have become a source of comfort to him as he begins to realise just how alone he is now, and it is like the time of his rebellion, time where he would wait on the side of a road and watch humanity as it passed him by because there was little else that he could do. At least then he could still hear, could still know the truth of the lives of the humans that he touched and see into their souls. It is different now, utterly silent except for the physical sounds. All around him the house creaks as it settles through the night and there is the click of claws as Eden's dog, Shadow, paces the house through the night, nosing at doors to ensure that the inhabitants are safe.

The fallen angel knows that he could turn on the light and begin writing again, to continue to record all that he knows against the possibility of another war between Heaven and Hell with humanity lumped somewhere in the middle. The knowledge that he still possesses is seemingly endless and he knows that were he to work every hour of every day and every night for two lifetimes it would still not be enough time to record it all. Except that even he knows that it would not be at all productive when he is so exhausted that he is beginning to see two of everything and against his will his eyes drift closed and even his best efforts will not allow him to open them again.

Sleep claims him and even though he hopes and prays every time that it will be dreamless, like all the rest of them it is anything but. He dreams of Hell, of walking through the flames of Perdition with his brothers and sisters at his side. He searches, they all do, for that elusive soul that continues to burn bright through darkness that tries to cover it. A soul that burns with Michael's light even though the blackness of despair and evil threatens to twist it into an agent of Lucifer himself.

When the dream begins he has a dozen of his brothers and sisters with him.

One by one they fall, one by one they burn and one by one they become the very demons that tear and claw at him as he fights to reach the man he will one day call friend. He tries to tell himself that this is wrong, that this is not the way that it happened and that his family did not turn on him, that Dean did not greet him with a raised blade and a snarl of hatred before trying to cut out Castiel's eyes. That he was as able to defend himself against the armies of Hell as he had always been, that his grace was with him then, but this dream will not allow him to see it as it all was, this dream sees Dean knock him to the ground and when he reaches for his grace there is an overwhelming place of nothing followed by the agony of a blade plunging deep into his abdomen.

He comes awake with a ragged gasp and a barely contained yell, the sheets are tangled around him, sweat soaked, and his heart is hammering so hard that for half a moment he thinks that it is going to jump straight out of his chest. Then there is a cold wet touch on the back of his hand, followed by the warm rough of a tongue and a low whine and he knows that he is not alone in the room.

"You were dreaming, Castiel," Eden mutters from the corner and even in this darkness he thinks that he can now see her because he knows that she there. "I could feel them. I've never felt you before," he does not know what he can say in response to that, does not know if there is even anything to say to it at all. "Is that why you won't sleep, because of the nightmares?"

"A little," he does not want to lie to her, nor does he want to tell her the whole truth, so he tells her a part of it and it seems to be enough.

"Have you thought about talking about them? He'd help if you gave him the chance." Castiel knows exactly who she is talking about, he does not need to ask and he is shocked by the way that his mind recoils from the idea.

"Dean has enough problems of his own, I cannot burden him with mine as well." He insists and hears her sigh into the darkness, the sound sharp and stark against the softness of her voice when she responds.

"He wouldn't see it as a burden. He _wants_ to help you, let him." The chair groans a little as she stands, ancient wood that is not often used resettling, and then there is the slap of a hand against her thigh followed by the click of claws on the wood floor as Shadow responds to the command, trots to the door as she opens it. For a moment there is a soft light on her face, showing him a sorrow there that he had not expected to see. "_Tell_ him that you don't want to go back to Heaven, Castiel, I think he will understand more than you realise."

The door clicks shut behind her and the room is once more plunged into darkness as he dwells on her words. He should try and sleep again, he knows, the few hours that he managed were hardly restful, but he needs to think and that is something that he cannot do in the house, he needs to see the sky, needs to see the stars.

So he gets out of bed, pulls on clothes and shoes, and decides that it is time for him to take a walk.

**Saturday**.

Of the three of them, Sam has known Eden the longest, though only really through chance. She was one of the psychics that he contacted when he was trying to get Dean out of his deal and again when he was trying to get his brother out of Hell. She was one of the people who suggested that Sam might look to really get on God's good side. Looking back on it, she was probably the only one who really knew why.

When they actually met it was completely by accident and Eden being who she is, it was easy for her to recognise him. She has been there for all of them while they were trying to stop the apocalypse, but of them all, she stuck by Castiel the most, earned his respect in a way that Sam never could and Dean would never imagine, because Dean already had Castiel's respect.

He knows that Castiel likes her, at one point even suspected that had his situation had been different, the angel could have loved her. She has been a quiet voice and a sympathetic ear to him and when he had no where else to go, Sam knows that the angel came here.

At the moment, however, he is nowhere to be found and Eden is staring silently out of the window as her fingers scratch absently behind Shadow's ears. They are all waiting, the three of them in the room, waiting for Castiel to come back from where ever he disappeared to at some point in the night. He has not taken his cell phone with him and even though Dean drove around town for over an hour when they realised Cas was gone, he has not been found.

Dean is back now and he is alternating between pacing to and from the window, flipping his phone open and closed and attempting to nonchalantly flick through whatever he can lay his hands on. Sam has only seen his brother this agitated a few times in the past, and never about someone outside of his family, but given that Castiel is currently out there on his own, something that has not happened since he turned up outside their motel room, it is understandable that Dean is concerned. Sam is too. Castiel is still very socially awkward at times and there is little that either of the brothers can do about that given that they are not much for interacting with people outside of their own circle of friends and family.

"To hell with this," Dean snaps finally, getting out of his seat, "I'm going out again to try and find him."

"He's fine," Eden responds, her eyes not leaving the window, "he's just taking a bit of time to adjust." Which is actually what Sam had thought the last few weeks had been about.

Dean is not having any of it, however, he grabs his jacket and heads out the door, keys in hand and for the third time that morning the air is cut by the low rumble of the Impala as Dean goes to look for their wayward friend. Sam does not offer to go with him, this is not because he does not care about what may have happened to Cas, but more because he wants to be here should the former angel turn up. Sam figures he is more likely to return of his own accord than Dean is to find him anyway.

As it turns out, Sam's hunch is correct and they can see Castiel walking wearily up the garden path not twenty minutes after Dean left. Sam is already calling his brother back as Eden opens the door.

"We were worried," she whispers, pulling him into a gentle hug. Castiel hesitates for a moment, uncertain, before awkwardly putting his arms around her. If she notices, she does not say anything.

"I am sorry," he replies, voice more gravelly than usual and now that Sam can see him, he looks like he has not slept at all. Any response is cut short, however, by the sound of the Impala, the slam of a door and the march of angry feet on gravel. Since they are all still gathered in living room with the front door open, Sam can see his brother's face as he approaches, can see the way that Dean's eyes travel over Castiel's body looking for any hint of an injury before fury settles in over the concern.

"Where the _hell_ were you?" Dean demands and Sam knows that this is just anger because Castiel made them all worry, anger because Dean does not get attached to people outside his family for fear they will get killed or hurt because of them. The angel's expression, however, is one of a kicked puppy and Sam hopes that he does, on some level, understand Dean's anger. "You can't just run off like that, Cas, what if something had happened? You're not an angel anymore, you can't just mojo your way out of a situation if it gets too much!"

"I am aware of that, Dean," there is a decidedly cold note to Castiel's voice, but Sam can see that he is barely holing his temper, barely keeping it together as Dean shouts at him. "I would like you to remember that I didn't ask for this and that it's all my punishment for helping _you._"

The room is silent for a long moment, Sam and Eden exchange long glances and Dean scrubs his hand over his face. Finally he speaks again, this time his voice calmer and a lot of the edge has gone out of it.

"I know that, doesn't change the fact that you should have told us where you were going." It is as close to an apology as the elder Winchester is going to get, Sam knows this, Castiel knows it too and Eden simply watches dispassionately, brown eyes blank, as this all goes down in her front room. Dean and Castiel simply stare at each other, their eyes locked in that same stare that has always made Sam uncomfortable, the one where neither of them seem to be aware of others in the room and when they _do_ interact with other people, they still do not break that gaze.

When they do look away from each other, the break is simultaneous and a relief to all parties, and Castiel excuses himself to return to his room to rest. Dean does not stop him, but he watches the former angel until he is out of sight and then turns his attention to Sam and Eden for a brief moment, grabs a newspaper and settles with a pen, searching for a hunt.

Sam shrugs it off as Dean's way of coping and does not notice Eden leave the room and go upstairs to join Cas.

**Sunday**.

Dean looks in the rearview mirror and sees Castiel asleep in the backseat, head propped against the lightly vibrating glass as the Impala idles while Sam is inside the small town store picking up a few bottles of water and some snacks for the drive.

To see Cas actually asleep takes a weight off Dean's mind, he has noticed how little the former angel sleeps, the way that he writes late into the night only to fall asleep over the pages and fall prey to nightmares instead. He knows that he should not have yelled at the guy the day before, that maybe he should have been a little more understanding and asked why Castiel had felt the need to actually go out for a walk in the middle of the night. Instead he had taken the same action that his father always had and he knows that he was wrong to do it.

He hears the angel whimper, glances back again and sees his face contorted, anguish and agony there and he reaches back, knocks the back of his hand against the other man's leg and sees him come awake with a start, confusion on his face as he tilts his head, although there is a sleepy aspect to it.

Dean smiles at him, asks silently if the former angel is alright, if he wants to talk about it. Cas shakes his head, his smile wavering a little, and Dean does not push, just nods as Castiel lets his head settle back against the glass again. The hunter watches him until he falls asleep once more.


	6. Chapter 6

_Holiday time is a good thing, two chapters in a few days, I'm running with it. I won't be able to give you an update next week, due to a little thing like my birthday I have been surprised by the possibility of a week away. Rather than make promises that I can't keep I would suggest that you expect the worst and I will see you in two weeks. If it's sooner then all well and good, but otherwise bare with me.  
_

_Voting is now closed, and to my horror I have already managed to write at least one of the pivitol end scenes long before I will need it. I have a goal people and I'm heading towards it scarily fast!  
_

Chapter Six: Week The Eighth.

**Tuesday**.

Heaven has never felt quite so restricting to Raphael as it has in the four months since his Father returned. They, meaning Michael, Gabriel and himself, have not seen Him since His return, to say that he is disappointed is something of an understatement. Not that he does not understand, he does, utterly, because He has a lot of work to do and now needs to find others that he can trust to complete the tasks set upon them. Raphael is in no doubt that he, Michael and Gabriel are somewhere near the bottom of that list now.

They have been left to languish awaiting their Father's judgement since His return, left to wait and worry while He has gone through the ranks and searched for those who blindly followed his orders and those who willingly lead whilst knowing the truth. The punishment of His highest, the only remaining archangels who have seen His face, has been saved for last.

Raphael does not hold on to much hope about the nature of his punishment for his part in everything, after all, the last few times his Father has been angry with mankind, who _are_ after all supposed to be the chosen children, He rained destruction down upon them. Even Castiel, who remained loyal and who searched Him out when all others thought He was dead, has been punished and in a fashion that Raphael finds cruel. That his brother has been sent to Earth, graceless and human, to try and establish whether a mortal man, who is little better than an empty vessel in the archangel's eyes, has the ability to love him, is wrong. It is too much.

As far as he is concerned, his current predicament is as much of a punishment as any other. Any and all angels who have taken a vessel in the last two years are still trapped in them, yanked to Heaven complete with meatsuit. It is disconcerting to see so many physical forms within the plains of Heaven, to be stuck within one form, corporeal. If he is honest, he fears it, fears that he will be trapped withing this body for all of eternity as a punishment, to watch the world and time pass him and never again tread the halls of Heaven in the form that has brought fear to so many of the lower ranks of angels over the millennia.

Castiel's punishment is by now common knowledge among the ranks, although Raphael doubts that they know there is the potential for a reward at the end of it. He thinks that it is enough that they have heard that Castiel has been stripped of everything, they are all toeing the line more, all a little more nervous of Him now that He has shown He will punish even the loyal for their transgressions.

"Our Father has come to his decision, brother," Michael tells him as he approaches. Of the three archangels he is the only one who did not take a vessel, though for ease of communication he has coalesced into a more human form, one that looks odd, foreign, on a brother who has only ever been seen as light and other worldly.

"And?" He asks, not really eager to hear it, more he is weary of waiting and wondering.

"We are to be demoted, then exiled to the Earth to watch over it's inhabitants until the true Apocalypse comes," the other archangel goes to one of the windows, another physicality created for the sake of the angels who are still in vessels, waves a hand that is not quite right, and endless nothing becomes a dingy motel room with three beds.

"When?" Raphael joins him, looks out at the same scene as his brother, the image clearing until he can see the sleeping forms of the Winchesters and Castiel.

"Upon Castiel's return, unless He can be convinced otherwise." They watch together as their fallen brother rolls over in his sleep, watch as he frowns.

"Four months is not enough time to do that," Raphael points out, gesturing to highlight the distance between Dean and Castiel. It is his understanding that humans who love each other crave the touch of the one who brings forth such an emotion, he sees no such action between these two.

"Naturally it is not, but forty years should be sufficient, if our brother can but _obtain_ the love," there is disgust in his tone, and Raphael shakes his head. "You do not believe that he can succeed?"

"I have watched them interact, Brother, more importantly, I have watched Dean. Even were he to feel the same, he would not act on it, certainly he would never admit it."

"Perhaps a simple push in the correct direction..." Michael suggests and for one foolish moment Raphael considers it then he shakes his head.

"No, we are as trapped here as he is there until he succeeds or fails, there is no way for us to intervene."

"Perhaps not for us, but Gabriel does not suffer from the same restrictions, she is already preparing a garrison to return as watchers. As our Father wishes, she will be going with them and playing her part. She is willing to aid us." Michael points out, the human face that he has imitated makes no expression, which does not matter because Raphael can still feel him as acutely as he ever has.

"If our Father finds out, it is still defiance of His word, Michael," Raphael does not make this point because he is afraid of discovery, he makes it so that Michael understands that if their interference is detected they will have more to worry about than exile upon the Earth.

"I am aware, as is she. Do you want to spend the rest of eternity trapped inside that mudmonkey? Do you expect me to believe that you would rather watch over them than bask in our Father's glory?" Raphael knows that Michael knows the answer to that already, turns his stolen eyes back onto the forms of the sleeping men, to his brother who is now tossing and turning in the throes of a nightmare and the stir of the man that he loves as distressed whimpers the archangels cannot hear reach his slumbering ears.

"What would you have me do?"

**Wednesday**.

They have not found a job since they left Eden's. It is not that jobs are hard to find these days, Castiel knows that, if anything, there is far more of them than there used to be purely because of the level of violent deaths in the last year, because the gates to Hell were opened and all manner of creatures escaped in that time. It is harder to find them a job because he knows that he is holding the Winchesters back.

There was a time when having him in tow would have been an asset, this is something that he knows as well as he knows his own name, but that time is gone now, was gone the instant that his Father ripped his grace from him and bound him to a form that is utterly mortal. He feels very much like a spare part now, like one who is neither needed or wanted. He is weak, powerless, he is everything that he had once feared becoming and it is all for a man who has no apparent feeling for him.

Dean seems to continue as he always has, though since Castiel's impromptu walk a few days before he has been watching the angel a little more closely. He is concerned, Castiel knows this, concerned because there is a toll being taken on this body by the simple fact that Castiel barely sleeps and can hardly bring himself to eat these days, has no passion for it, no pleasure in it, even coffee has begun to lose it's appeal and Castiel would rather sip a glass of water and nibble on a piece of bread than eat a full or proper meal. The hunters do not allow that, ensuring that he gets at least a little food into him before giving up and letting him do as he will.

Where Dean's concern is quiet and unassuming, Sam's is loud and more forceful. Dean worries with quiet touches and gestures that are both unwanted and welcome. Sam reminds Castiel of a nagging old woman. He pulls faces every time Castiel leaves a meal unfinished, every time that he finds the angel awake at four in the morning, pen moving furiously over paper and eyelids heavy with the need for sleep that he alternates between successful and unsuccessful avoidance of. He can hear Sam when he talks to Dean when he thinks Castiel is either not listening or cannot hear him, when he tells Dean that they need to do something because this cannot go on, that they need to talk to him and find out why he is avoiding things that he so desperately needs. Castiel knows that neither of them really has a clue why he is behaving the way that he does.

It has taken eight weeks, but reality has finally started to hit for the former angel, every dream and nightmare, every drink and meal, every day spent in a car with the brothers and every night spent in a room trying not to sleep has given him time to think about his position. It has made him realise that he is not an angel anymore. It has given him time to despair.

He does not like the emotion, does not like the sensation, of despair. Does not like the way that it eats at him, at his mind, his body and his soul and leaves room for little else. It is all consuming and not even the love that he believed could once carry him through all else, a love that carried him through a battle with Lucifer's forces and a quest for God, can stave off the black feeling in his heart as he watches Dean flirt with waitresses and barmaids. He wonders if he has simply been naive, naive in believing that Dean could ever feel the same for him, naive in the belief that his Father has seen the possibility that this will be anything greater than a punishment.

This _is_ a punishment and there is nothing more to it, he must simply make his way through the next four months seeing, hearing and doing as little as possible to draw attention to himself. His happiness, he thinks, is not to be secured in this way, with this man. It is simply that Dean is the only other person in the universe other than his Father that he has ever dared to allow himself to love. He curses himself as a fool for it.

He almost wishes that Dean would do something more than watch him with worry and shove plates of pie at him in diners in an effort to get him to eat more. He wishes that he could talk to Dean as Eden suggested, that he could open his heart and ask for help dealing with all of these emotions that are both utterly new and yet as old as time itself. He knows Dean, knows that Dean does not deal well with them, so he simply keeps himself to himself, tries to let the concerned words and looks wash over him.

It has not been an easy few days, things between Dean and he are less than easy. He knows that they both stepped over a line at Eden's, that they both threw facts at each other that they perhaps should not have and that maybe he should focus more on the actions that have caused his current predicament rather than laying the blame for them all squarely at Dean's feet.

He knows, deep down, that this is all really his fault, that he should have turned his back on Dean rather than given in to the pressure of the man's words and his own heart. He could not, could never, because he pulled Dean from Hell and once, long ago, that would have meant something more than just condemning the man to the life of a vessel.

He sighs, eyes heavy, exhausted after several days on little to no rest and resolves that tomorrow he will find them a hunt, tomorrow he will ensure that they go and do as they should have been since he arrived on Earth. They cannot ignore the job anymore, not even if the brothers want to, not on his account.

If he is going to find a job, he needs to sleep and it is with reluctance that he slips into the bed that is his for this one night and with trepidation that he lets his eyes slide shut.

**Thursday**.

Sam watches as Castiel finally goes to bed of his own accord, for the first time in weeks leaving his work to rest and he hopes that this is a step forward, sincerely so, otherwise he is going to have to step in and force Dean to say something. He does not want to, does not want to push at the angel when he is obviously in a bad place, when he is obviously struggling with having to adapt to life as a human.

Sam is under no illusions, at no point did he ever think that this would be easy for the angel. He had hoped that perhaps the transition would be a little smoother, that maybe Cas would be more inclined to discuss how he has been feeling about the whole thing rather than bottling it all up until he explodes. He is beginning to think that hope may have been in vain. The only real role model he has had for how to be human are the two Winchester brothers and neither one of them are exactly stellar models of humanity.

What is done, is done, however, and Castiel is with them now until his Father sees fit to show mercy upon him and take him back up to Heaven. There is nothing, Sam knows, that will make Dean push Castiel away, at least not permanently, he feels his own hand in all of this far too keenly.

That is something that Sam worries about, Dean's guilt about all of this. It is one thing for him to want to help Cas any way that he can, it is another entirely for him to freak out the way that he did at Eden's. Sam has only seen that kind of reaction with two other people, one of them is already dead and the other is himself. He should not let it worry him, this attachment that his brother has formed to Castiel because he has to admit that the angel has done a lot for them, at the same time he has to acknowledge that while reading Cas is not as easy as he would have liked, Dean is far easier to see through, even with all of his walls and his defences.

There is an affection there that is not entirely unexpected, given the time that they have spent together and the actions that the angel has taken, but there is something to it that makes Sam wriggle uncomfortably at the same time. Dean has not been one for eye contact since Hell. He keeps up a facade while on jobs, looks at people and maintains it so that they believe him trustworthy and truthful, but at all other times, when he is not pretending to be someone else utterly, he does not meet peoples eyes. Except Castiel. Even when he tries his hardest to avoid Sam's eyes because he is afraid what his younger brother will see, he has sought out Castiel's. Sam cannot decide if Dean's inability to look at him hurts more, or the fact that Cas obviously knows more about what happened in Hell.

What Sam does know is that before Cas turned up and before that case with all the children, Dean was finally dealing with Hell, finally sleeping and had begun to forgive himself. That case, that demon, has brought a lot of it back for him, brought more blame forward, and Sam thinks that if Dean and Castiel would just talk to one another about it, because Dean is obviously never going to tell his younger brother all the details, maybe both of them can start healing.

With all of these thoughts swimming in his mind, Sam is hard pressed to actually get to sleep and when he hears Cas mutter in his sleep, hears him stir and whimper his first instinct is to go to him. He stops when he hears Dean move, hears him mutter and shift out of the bed, marvels at how in tune his brother seems to be with the angel, at the way he crouches by the bed and whispers something and the fallen angel stills.

Sam closes his eyes as he hears Dean begin to move about the room again, to cover his trip to Castiel's bedside with a trip to the bathroom. He has a lot to think on and a lot to worry about, cannot fathom what Dean will do if something actually _happens_ to Cas, does not let that worry him overly at this precise moment because they are being careful and he will worry about it when it gets closer. They are coping, and he knows that if Castiel is trying to sleep it more than likely means that he is going to look for a hunt and that means that he wants to be fresh and on his toes, but Sam is antsy and bored and he needs something to do and if there is a hunt Dean will be all over it anyway, he figures that his brother was waiting until Cas was ready.


	7. Chapter 7

_The votes are counted and I am back from my holiday! Yorkshire was beautiful, just like it was three years ago, and it was also inspiring, I got an awful lot of work done while I was there. Thanks out to all my lovely reviewers, it was great to come back and see them all in my inbox. Anyway, much as I would love to wax lyrical about the beauty of Rievaulx and Whitby Abbeys I have a chapter to post for you all and I think I kept you waiting long enough. Onwards!_

Chapter Seven: Week the Ninth.

**Wednesday**.

Dean is on the verge of overriding his personal preferences and cornering Castiel so that they can have a long and serious talk about his sleeping and eating habits, or lack thereof. The hunt they just finished was a good one, an easy one that went off without a hitch, for a change, and it means that there is one less angry spirit in the world to be dealt with. Now they have gotten wind of a few demons two states over and are going to check it out. Dean knows that there is a possibility that it is _her_, so he needs everyone at their best and on their toes. They cannot be if Castiel is still only getting four or five hours sleep a night and eating less than a chick on a diet.

What Dean can admit, however, is that Castiel has been improving, he has seen the way that the angel will force himself to go to bed rather than write through the night, the way that he will eat half of his salad of the moment but follow it with the piece of pie that Dean always orders for him. Trouble is, the guy is still too quiet and even if he does go to bed at a reasonable hour, he is woken by nightmares during the night and then will not sleep again, no matter how hard Dean pushes, and he _does_ push.

In all seriousness Dean has considered drugging him a few times to send him off, to push him into sleeping so that the hunter can feel a little more comfortable with the former angel having his back. That is a breach of trust, however, and he knows that no matter anything else, when hunting trust is the most important factor. So they have worked through the last few days, finished a hunt and left town, have finally gotten to a motel only to be told that there are no rooms with pull out beds left and they will have to settle with one room with two queen beds or two rooms and split up for the night.

Dean is reluctant to separate, because he knows that it will be Sam on his own, but at the same time does not like the idea of having to share a bed with his brother, having grown out of that at the age of eight, or sharing one with Cas, because he _likes_ the guy, but that would just be weird. He resolutely refuses to examine the thought that skitters through his mind that says it might actually be nice. Sam says he can share with the angel, since it would only be for one night and for some odd reason Dean's mind derails at that, for a moment all he can see is red and the phrase _hell no_ marches straight on through and he is taking two rooms before he has really thought on it.

He does think on it later, when the salt lines are down and the devil's traps are drawn and Cas has added some bizarre symbol to the back of the door that he says will warn them of a demon approaching and as tired as Dean is right now, he will take anything that he can get. Besides, even if the Apocalypse did little else, it has brought all the hunters in the world up to a new level of paranoid. So when the lights are out and they lie in their separate beds, he stares at the ceiling, listens the Castiel's breathing even out, because if the hunt has done one thing it has worn him out enough to make him crave sleep, and he thinks on why he got two rooms, on that thought that he did not want to acknowledge. He stops thinking abruptly as soon as the implications of that one cross his mind.

He sleeps more heavily that night than he has in a while. Somehow it being just him and Cas in the room makes his worry less because he does not have to worry about Sam having a night of broken sleep, does not have to worry about Sam asking questions because Castiel is having nightmares and hearing answers Dean is not sure he wants his brother to hear.

So they sleep, or try to, at some point after two Castiel starts to whimper and Dean is ok with that, really, because this time he can wake him up properly, this time he can ask for answers and not have to worry about waking Sam.

"Dean?" There is confusion in Castiel's voice that tears at Dean, the sort of note that asks why Dean is waking him, why Dean is there and he realises that perhaps he should have done this a while ago, perhaps he should have actually woken the fallen angel and demanded answers from him like Sam had suggested.

"You were having a nightmare," the hunter supplies, hand still resting on Castiel's shoulder where he had shaken him awake. The angel is warm, soft, _pliant_ under his hands and that scares him because, before all of this, his friend was never that way. He shifts to sit next to him, figures that if he is actually going to do this he may as well be comfortable.

"I woke you," it is that same sort statement that the angel has used since Dean has known him, and he figures that he must stop thinking of Castiel as an angel, the question that is not a question.

"Nah, I was already awake," he means it as reassurance, realises that he has not taken his hand away yet and withdraws it slowly, so as not to freak Cas out anymore than he evidently already is.

"You need rest," Castiel insists and that draws a short laugh from Dean, more of a bark than anything.

"So do you, man." He scrubs his hand over his hair, feels something in him clench at the thought of asking what he is about to. "Look, do you want..." he hesitates, takes a breath, because when he is not making the demands out of anger and frustration it is actually remarkably hard to do, "to, I don't know, maybe talk about it? The nightmares, that is."

Even in the darkness he can feel Castiel's eyes on him, staring at him. Then there is a sigh and Cas shifts on the bed, closer to Dean but still not near enough that they touch.

"I have existed for a long time, Dean, have seen many battles and many horrors. They are my burden and I cannot trouble you with them." The rejection is almost like a kick and he is not sure why he is disappointed that Castiel is refusing to talk to him about his dreams. "Perhaps someday..." Cas finishes and that Dean is alright with, that he can allow, because when Castiel is ready Dean promises himself that he will be there to listen.

"You should go back to sleep," he says, trying, and possibly succeeding, to hide his disappointment. He feels Cas shift again, can sense the denial before it is even said.

"I do not think that I will be able to," he responds and if Dean could see in the blackness he is quite certain he would be seeing red.

"If you don't sleep, then I won't be," he responds because he is tired, he is tired of the way that the former angel insists on running himself into the ground, he is tired of fighting and he is tired of holding his tongue. He reaches for the lamp.

"You need to rest, Dean," Castiel insists again as they are bathed in soft yellow, the light makes him look sickly, haggard.

"So do you," they stare at each other, neither willing to back down, and Dean knows that were Sam in the room he would have told them both to shut up and go back to sleep by now. He is not taking no for an answer, however, and eventually Castiel looks away. "Just try and get some more sleep, Cas," and there is no way that Dean will ever admit to anyone that he is on the verge of begging, "we'll talk about this another time."

"Dean..." the hunter cuts off any argument before it can be made.

"No, end of discussion, you need sleep, I need sleep." He flicks the lamp off and rises to return to his own bed, feels Castiel's hand latch onto his wrist. The fallen angel does not say anything, just releases him after a moment and Dean crawls under the covers, tries to relax and allow himself sleep, allow himself to rest but finds that he cannot until he hears Castiel begin to snore, hears soft breaths from across the room.

**Thursday**.

When Castiel wakes again it is nine in the morning and he can hear the sound of the shower running, along with Dean's voice drifting from the bathroom in what can only be called a rough approximation of actual singing. It brings a smile to the former angel's lips to hear Dean so carefree, if only for a moment, and he rolls over in the bed, looking at the bathroom door and taking a moment to relax into the warmth that cocoons him.

When the bathroom door opens, Dean is grinning and wearing only a towel and mentally Castiel groans while he drinks in the way that droplets of water run down the hunter's skin. He has to close his eyes to stop himself from staring, which does little good given that the image has been burned onto the back of his eyelids.

"Hey," Dean cuffs at one of his feet and Castiel is almost reluctant to open his eyes again but knows he has to, at least hopes that he has gotten some of his feelings under control. This is not the first time that he has seen Dean wearing little more than a towel, but every time it is the same, the same feeling of want and of lust. "Hurry up and get showered, I need to eat."

Castiel _has_ to smile at that, because it is so Dean, always has been. The hunter is more likely to think with his stomach than with anything else. So he rolls out of bed and retires to the bathroom, has a quick shower, because if Dean has waited this late it eat it is not likely that he will be willing to wait much longer, and dresses in the bathroom. He still does this, knows that Dean and Sam both are comfortable enough with their bodies to dress in the room but his is still new, still fresh, and he is not sure what to make of it. Neither has said anything about it, neither has drawn attention to it, so he does not let it bother him overly.

Dean is all but bouncing when Castiel emerges and Sam is also waiting, bags at his feet to indicate that as soon as breakfast is done they are leaving town. Both brothers look well rested and at the half smile on Sam's face, Castiel realises that he must look about the same, certainly better than he has been looking because Dean is outright grinning and the former angel is undecided as too the reason. He flings the sweat pants and t-shirt he slept in into his duffle, it is still strange to him that all he owns in the world can be found in this one bag where most humans have so much, picks it up and follows them from the room. Belongings are flung into the trunk of the Impala while Sam checks out and by the time the younger returns, Dean and Castiel are waiting in the car.

Breakfast is taken in a diner not far down the street and even though Castiel has slept well, certainly better than he has in the last month and a half, he still does not much feel like eating. Still, a stack of pancakes are ordered and Dean is quick to add a side of bacon to that as well, though Castiel knows that at least half of that will be eaten by the hunter as it always is. Dean has opted for some form of bacon, sausage and egg sandwich, which from Castiel's point of view appears thoroughly disgusting, the hunter eats it like a starving man, however, and Castiel contents himself with coffee and half of his pancakes.

They are still eating when the demons attack. They come in through the front and at first Castiel would have taken them for ordinary humans, except that as soon as they spot the trio at the table in the corner the lead demon's eyes flash black and he has reached over to the waitress and broken her neck. The crack of it is almost deafening and both Dean and Sam turn to look as the fallen angel stares.

They are unarmed, as far as demons go, each of them carries a small knife and the Winchesters both have a hand gun, but the colt and demon killing knife are in the trunk of the Impala where they are supposed to be safe. All around them is screaming, all around them is chaos, and even though they all know that the bullets they have will do little against the demons but slow them down, the brothers open fire anyway. People are running around almost aimlessly, anyone who gets close enough to the demons is killed, and Castiel knows that the next target is them. He does the only thing he can think of.

There is a jug of water on the table and he grabs it, pulls it close and offers a quick prayer to his Father that this will work even though he is not an angel anymore, even though he does not have the blessed beads that a human would normally use. He touches the water with one finger, whispers the blessing prayer over it, pours a glass full and flings it over the nearest demon.

She shrieks when it touches her, reeling away as steam rises from her face and Castiel flings more out at them. Slowly, with gunshots and holy water, they drive the demons back.

"_Regna terrae, cantate Deo_," he begins to chant the first exorcism that comes to mind, his pronunciation a little different to that of the modern hunter, but the words are enough, the meaning is the same. "_Psallite Domino qui fertis super caelum caeli ad Orientem Ecce dabit voci Suae vocem virtutis tribuite virtutem Deo._" The demons flee.

They leave, already they can hear the sound of sirens in the background and they cannot afford to hang around and find out what will be said, cannot afford to fall into police custody. Even though every instinct of Castiel's is screaming for Dean to get away from the diner as quickly as possible, Dean leaves slowly, blending into the flow of ordinary traffic and drawing as little attention to them as possible until the are on the outskirts of town, where he floors it.

They stop an hour later, Dean pulling into an almost hidden turning where they wait to see if they can hear any sound of pursuit. There is nothing except the odd noise of a passing car and all three relax. For a long moment no one says anything, no one has to, they all know how close they came and then Sam turns to look at him. There is a frown on the younger Winchesters face, the same frown that Castiel recognises from all the time Sam has spent trying to find a way to send him home, it is the frown that says that he is trying to work something out.

"Cas, how did you know that would work? The holy water?" He asks and Dean snorts.

"Because they were _demons_, Sammy," he tells his brother and Sam shakes his head.

"Unless diners have started serving holy water, Cas made that without any of the usual stuff." Dean turns to look at him as well and Castiel finds himself feeling nervous under their combined gaze.

"I didn't," he admits finally. "We needed it and I had to trust it would work."

"It was a risk," Sam points out.

"I had little choice, we were defenceless and the weapons we did have would only have held up for so long." They lapse back into silence. "I don't intend on attempting it again." He tells them finally and it seems to be enough to fill Dean with a desire to be long gone from this place. The engine rumbles beneath them and they are moving again.

**Friday**.

The room is light and airy, curtains flung open so that the light of the sun can reach the pale skin of the auburn haired woman. She stands in the window, pale grey eyes looking into the street below and watching the life that skitters along it, souls that will one day join her kind in the pit and reenforce an army weakened by a war brought too soon to the world.

She is patient, has existed for far too long for the failings of her younger brethren to still be one of her own. Over the centuries under his tutelage, Alistair taught her the fine art of patience, of where and how to apply it, of when to lose her grasp on it and how to regain it rapidly. She has always been a good student.

She is patient now, as she listens to one of her lackeys report on the attack of the day before, as she listens to them tell her that they failed to take the fallen angel, that he is far more resourceful than they had expected him to be. She shrugs off the failure, less interested in the actual capture of the angel than she is in making Dean fall off balance. She wants him on edge, paranoid, and jumping at the sight of his own shadow. As far as she is concerned the end result will be the same.

The demon turns from the window, looks at the map spread on the table and mutters under her breath. The spell is an ancient one, old even when she was alive and was stood on cliff tops watching the Roman ships approach her land, the counter she has placed there shifts and settles over a road that heads to only one place and she smiles, watches as her lackey contacts others under her control in the near vicinity. It is almost too easy.

The orders that she has given are simple, to do with Sam Winchester as they will, alive or dead he is not important, but Dean Winchester and his angel must be taken alive, together or separately she does not care, as long as they are alive.

**Sunday**.

The demons are still chasing them, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, but always close. Sam is still at a loss trying to figure out how they are doing it, how they have been able to track them even to a motel room, and he never thought he would be as grateful for Castiel's seemingly endless knowledge of ancient and lost charms as he is now. With charms that give warnings and others that simply drive the demons away for a short period, they have been able to avoid several confrontations.

It annoys Sam, that they have to run when they should fight, but not all of these demons are lower level and after begin thrown against more than one wall, they are a little more wary. This is not to mention the fact that while they seem more interested in killing the younger Winchester, their plans for Castiel appear to be a little more sinister. Every time more and more of them seem to throw themselves at the trio and while they can handle five or six, fifteen is simply too much.

He rubs his hand over his chest as he thinks. The markings that Cas carved there over a year ago are not detectable under his fingertips, but Sam knows that they are still there. Which is the answer, he realises, the whole reason that the demons have been able to track them in the first place and he turns to look at his brother and the former angel, both of whom are sleeping while Sam watches the wards.

As reluctant as he is to wake the fallen angel now that he is too exhausted to dream, it needs to be done, he needs to know if Castiel used the same protection charms on himself or if he had another method of hiding when he was cut off that last time.

"Cas," Dean stirs as Sam utters the name, shaking Castiel gently as he rouses him. The room is dark, he cannot see the former angel's face, but he hears his name whispered in the dark and knows that Cas is awake. "Those symbols you carved into me and Dean, the ones to hide us from everyone, did you ever do it to yourself?"

"No, there was no need, I had other ways to hide." He can hear the former angel's confusion, flips on the bedside lamp and hears Dean mutter a curse as he is abruptly woken.

"It's not us," Sam says, earning himself twin sleepy glares and a mumble from Dean that he understands the meaning of even if he does not hear all the words. "The demons, they're not tracking us, we've got the rib graffiti, they can't."

"We knew that already, Sam," Dean grumbles.

"Cas doesn't have it, he never needed it," comprehension dawns in blue eyes while Dean continues to squint at him and Sam wonders if maybe he should have waited until morning, until Dean was actually awake rather than announcing his discovery in the middle of the night. "They aren't tracking you and me, Dean, they're tracking Castiel."

"Son of a bitch," Dean hisses, finally sitting up and looking over at Cas. "She must have recognised you." Right now, however, _how_ the demons found out about Castiel is not at the fore of Sam's mind. What he is more focussed on is how to prevent them from finding him _now_. There is no way that they are going to get the rib graffiti onto Castiel, no one who could help them to do it and to have it tattooed onto him would take too long.

"Would hex bags work?" He asks because the bags they can use to hide them from prying eyes are about the only useful things that Ruby taught him how to make. Castiel considers it for a long moment and Sam begins to worry that he is going to say that they will most likely not be enough. After a moment, however, he nods and that is all that Sam needs to hear on the subject, tells the two of them to get packed because it is likely that the demons already know where they are and if that is the case, whether they suddenly drop off the radar or not, they will need to be ready to get out of town.

He does not stick around to see if they do as he suggests, just goes to the Impala and grabs a small tan bag from the trunk, one that Dean either has not noticed over the last eighteen months or he simply choses to ignore it. At this precise moment Sam does not care which it is, simply finds himself a secluded space and does the complicated ritual that goes with putting the bag together.

All in all it takes him nearly half an hour and though the ritual is complicated it's one saving grace is that it involves neither blood nor deal. He takes it back to the room and tosses it to Castiel, who looks up from whatever deep and meaningful discussion he has been having with Dean to catch it. He is relieved to see that no matter what their discussion, they have not wasted the time that he was away and all of the bags have been packed and protective symbols have been cleaned from the walls and door.

They leave without a specific destination in mind, they still have a lot more preparation to do, it would seem, until Dean thinks that they will be ready to track _her_ down but first they have to be sure that the hex bags work and that means going somewhere and waiting. Sam does not like waiting for the enemy to come to him.

_The Exorcism used in the chapter was taken from both the show and from Bone Key, one of the attatched novels that I highly recommend._

_Artemis  
_


	8. Chapter 8

_Another day, another chapter. I am afraid I have fallen into an old and bad habit in the shape of two books in three days, this cuts into my writing time, but I simply cannot put them down. On the plus side, I know exactly how I want this to pan out now, on the down I seem to have hit a bit of writers block, lots of lovely reviews will help there let me assure you. Somewhere in my mind I am sure I read one of the events in this fic in another one (I've read so many) and I'm certain it was one of the ones by krissy7490, so if I have, thank you for the inspiration (you'll probably recognise it), and if I haven't then my remaining marbles have gone down the great marble run of sanity.  
_

_Anyway, moving onwards, the block is not my main problem, we are having difficulties at work so I may have to spend more time there and less time on our boys. I will work on it as much as I can so don't give up on me.  
_

Chapter Eight: Week the Eleventh.

**Monday**.

It has been a week and so far there is no sign that the demons have found a way to circumvent the protection offered by the hex bag, three days where the Winchesters and their fallen angel have been hiding in a run down cabin somewhere in the back end of nowhere, Illinois. Dean has not been sleeping well the last few days, is jumping at shadows and worrying that every passing car, every distant noise, is the demons. It is not like him and he thinks that it is in part to do with his worry over Castiel. The angel is not sleeping much anymore either, what with them being on forced downtime until they figure out whether the demons can still track them.

Dean knows that the hex bag is a less than perfect solution to the whole thing, knows that it is more than likely that the demons have simply backed off of their own accord rather than not being able to find them. They cannot stay in this cabin for much longer though, have already used up nearly all of the supplies that they bought so they either all leave together and hope that this week has been enough, or they stay here until they are too hungry to hide anymore. Dean prefers option one, is certain that Sam will too. He does not know which Cas would rather do.

Which brings him squarely back around to worrying about the former angel as he watches the sunrise. He has been spending ever increasing amounts of time thinking about Castiel, about what they should actually do about him. Dean knows that he does not want the guy to go back upstairs, not now that he has actually spent more time with him, has gotten to know him, and sure, sometimes Cas reminds Dean more of Sam and the hunter would be the first to admit that the last thing he needs is two Sam Winchesters hounding him, but the fallen angel has other qualities too, has an innocence and openness to his face and being that makes people open up to him.

At the same time, Dean knows that it is not fair to keep dragging him around with them on hunts, worries that this is not what Castiel will want from his time as a human, how ever long or short that time may be. There is another fear, though, that Dean does not dare share with anyone. Dean is afraid that by spending time with them, with Sam and him, that Castiel will turn into that bitter drug addict that he met in the future Zachariah showed him. That is the last thing that Dean wants, to lose his friend to drugs and alcohol and a different girl, or group of girls, every night. A part of him is determined to protect Castiel from that at any cost and he wonders if it may be easier to do that if he were to leave Cas with Bobby for a while.

He hears the door open and the soft footsteps of another before seeing Castiel sit next to him out of the corner of his eye. He takes a moment to study the fallen angel in the light of the rising sun. His dark hair is a little longer than it was when he arrived, Dean figures that they will need to take him to get it cut soon, and though he is thinner, because he simply does not eat like he is supposed to, he is not looking unhealthy, at least not yet. What surprises the hunter the most, however, is that he had expected to see contentment in the former angel's face, had expected that he would be happier staying in one place. What he actually sees is impatience, a desire to be moving and travelling almost rippling beneath Castiel's skin and he makes a small noise of surprise at it.

Castiel turns to look at him at the sound, tilting the corner of his mouth up in the familiar half smile that Dean came to enjoy seeing in the last eighteen months. The half smile that Castiel the angel gave him when he did not know how else to express his happiness. It is genuine and nothing like the wide, false, smile that Dean fears he will one day see there.

"Something troubles you," Cas states, smile quickly replaced by a frown and a tilt of his head. The movement is reassuring, is so utterly Castiel, that Dean relaxes a little and admits to himself that he is surprised by how at ease he is with the former angel these days.

"It's nothing," he says, but it feels wrong, keeping this fear from Castiel. "Thinking about what'll happen if we can't find a way to send you back." The fallen angel stays silent, turns his eyes back out to the sky line.

"You don't have to keep looking, Dean," he responds, voice distant. "If I meet certain conditions my Father will allow me to return home one day."

"What are they?" Dean asks, feels something inside him go tight at the thought that Cas has been quietly working alone so that he can become what his Father needs him to become, so that he can go back to Heaven, and neither Dean nor Sam have done anything to help him.

"They don't matter," and the smile is there again, a little sadder than Dean would have liked to see it, "I don't _want_ to go back." At first Dean thinks that he has heard the conversation wrong, because there is no way that the angel can possibly want to stay here, no way that he can possibly want to be human. Except that Dean remembers another conversation with another fallen angel where he asked exactly the same thing and received a far more detailed answer than he had expected. He nudges the angel's shoulder as he speaks again.

"So you want to be a real boy," he receives an uncomprehending stare for his troubles. "There anything specific that you want? Wife? Job? Kids?" Part of it is teasing, part of it is not, because Dean really is worried that Cas will want the house and the wife and the children that go with it, does not know why that makes his heart plunge into his boots and his breath catch in his throat.

"I am content simply hunting with you, and with Sam, as long as you will allow me to," Castiel responds, voice distant as though he is thinking of something else entirely. "Perhaps, love," he shrugs, "someday if I am fortunate."

"You got anyone in mind?" Dean asks, curious, afraid to hear the answer and yet eager at the same time. "Eden?" He pushes when Cas does not respond and is surprised when Castiel laughs, a short, soft, sound of genuine amusement.

"No," he does not say which question he is answering, just stares back out and sighs. "We should move on, Dean," he says, all wistfulness from their previous conversation gone. "The demons have not found us, Sam's hex bag seems to be strong enough to hide me from them, and we shouldn't waste anymore time." That is the Castiel that Dean knows so well, the one who is as accustomed to being obeyed as Dean is.

"Sure, go in and let Sam know, I'll be through in a minute," Dean does not look at Castiel as he speaks, listens to him stand and go back inside, waits until he is certain that he is not being watched before he throws his eyes Heavenward and whispers a thank you in his mind.

Dean may not want to think about why he is so eager to keep Castiel near, does not want to run the risk of making any sort of potentially awkward discovery, but he is glad that Cas feels the same way about staying as Dean does. His main task now, he decides, is making sure that Castiel does not find a reason to utterly regret this choice.

**Tuesday**.

Gabriel is beginning to become frustrated. The archangel knows a little about human emotion, enough to get by in the human world, but is finding that Dean Winchester is an incredibly infuriating specimen.

It is clear to the archangel that whatever Dean allows himself to feel, he feels deeply. Any failure or success, any sorrow or joy, any hatred or love, are all strongly felt whenever he choses to acknowledge it. The problem that Gabriel is having is determining whether Dean actually has it in him to love Castiel as more than a friend, or if the warmest of friendship is all that is ever going to exist between the two.

Like Michael and Raphael, Gabriel does not believe that her Father is so angry with Castiel that He would be cruel enough to not only trap him inside a mortal body for six months with no access to grace or brethren, but to also give hope of love whilst knowing that there would never be the possibility that such a feeling be reciprocated. Humans have been known to say that they cannot chose who they love, which Gabriel believes, they can, however, chose how they act upon the feeling. After observing Dean for three weeks the archangel has learnt little about his true feelings.

What Gabriel _has_ managed to learn is that whether Dean returns Castiel's love or not, it is unlikely that he will ever admit it without some serious pushing from all sides. It is altogether likely that Castiel will never say anything on the subject until he is certain of Dean's feelings, Sam will probably never interfere and nor will their friend, Robert Singer. Gabriel considers Eden Matthews for a moment, wonders if the psychic will help her to push Dean into admitting whether or not he loves Castiel, and dismisses it in almost the same thought. If she is going to make this work, she decides, then she is going to have to do it on her own.

If Gabriel is honest, and she is rarely anything but, she will admit that she does not actually care whether or not the three of them are demoted for their actions. Michael and Raphael fear it because they have spent so long in power that it is hard for them to know anything other than giving orders. Gabriel has been her Father's messenger for longer than she cares to contemplate, she has resigned herself to the idea that it is long past time for someone else to take on the role for a while. Gabriel, therefore, does not have a huge amount resting on the success of this plan, the only thing that she does not want is to have to spend the rest of eternity listening to her brothers complaining about what they have lost.

Her brothers have already been asking after her success, all the while implying that they will be seriously displeased if she fails. It is enough to make her consider allowing this change to the pecking order of Heaven, if only so that she can feel a little smug about the downfall of Michael and Raphael. She knows that the motives of her brothers in this cannot be entirely pure, just as she knows that her brothers will never be able to change their Father's mind about the nature of their punishment. In her opinion they are getting away lightly, they lost faith in Him and without faith an angel is nothing.

Gabriel vividly remembers the day that Lucifer was cast down, cast out of Heaven and bound in Hell. That said, she could not remember it in any other way, the memories of angels do not fade and they cannot forget, find it hard to forgive. She remembers the words that Lucifer spoke, the accusations against mankind that he made, and she knows that he was right, acknowledges that his timing was wrong and his words poorly chosen but right all the same. It makes little difference at the end of it all, whether Lucifer was right or not, because his actions _after_ the words were what sealed his fate. Lucifer's actions have always been the reason that her Father left him to languish in the pit, even when He saw the truth of the Morning Star's words and exiled Himself so that He did not have to watch mankind destroy itself.

None of this matters to Gabriel as she watches, a mere hex bag doing nothing to hide Castiel, and therefore the Winchesters, from her grace and gaze, she is still an archangel after all, at least, she is an archangel for now. What matters to her is that Castiel is being given the chance to have something that many of their brothers were cast down for, Azazel included, and much as she knows that success for Michael and Raphael will spell bad things for the weaker angel when he returns to Heaven, whether in three months or thirty years, she actually hopes that he might be allowed this love so that it will offer a hope of change to all of the Host.

This is why she has to make this happen for him, not because she owes anything to Michael and Raphael, not because she would rather spend the rest of eternity in peace, but because she wishes to make existence better for her own kind. What Gabriel really wants, is to show her Father that while they all love him and are devoted to him, just once in a while, it should be alright for them to love a human, or another of their kind, without censure and punishment. She believes that if this is successful for Castiel, that if she can just keep the two archangels from avoiding their punishment, perhaps she can convince her Father that this, this love for a human, is a good thing. Of course, in the process, she has her own orders to complete that are equally, if not more, important. She wonders if she can use that to her advantage

**Wednesday**.

Since telling Dean that he wishes to remain on Earth Castiel has felt a great deal lighter, has felt like something black and ugly has been taken from his soul leaving it that little bit cleaner. It makes him wish that he could risk telling Dean the whole truth.

It has had other effects as well, Dean seems less melancholy, although this is the most subtle of changes that only someone who knows him well would notice, and Sam has relaxed now that he is not being expected to achieve the impossible. It also means that they have decided that Castiel needs to learn more skills that they otherwise would not have worried about teaching him.

It means that Castiel needs to learn how to drive.

This should come as no great surprise, he is going to be with them until he either hears Dean say he loves him or until he fails and his Father calls him home. Bobby is already working to create him an identity, it being one thing to make up a name and put it into use and another entirely to get it into the system. This all means that they are going to work on making him more useful to themselves and give him greater skills to use in the world should he ever decided upon leaving them. Driving, Dean has told him, is utterly essential.

Castiel does not like it, Dean has _borrowed_ someone else's vehicle for teaching purposes, and even though he is not as smooth at it as Dean is, something he has been told will come with practice, he finds that this reliance on other drivers to all pay as much attention as he does is foolish. Others are not always careful and he has seen the results of car accidents on the side of a road already since he came to Earth. He supposes that enjoyment, like skill, will come to him in time.

Aside from the driving, Castiel has been taken to learn other things. Dean is teaching him the art of pool and of poker, teaching him how to take others money through deception. This is something that he _is_ becoming good at, the analytical mind of an angel seems perfectly suited to judging angles and probabilities. It is a slow process and he is not yet ready to put his new skills to the test in the real world, especially given that it has only been two days, but he certainly likes them better than he does driving. Dean seems to be alright with that.

The other thing that both the brothers have insisted on is that Castiel get a tattoo. He may once have been an angel but now that he is human, to all intents and purposes, he is as open to being possessed as any other. They have brought him to someone that they trust, a tall man with chestnut brown hair, green eyes that seem to turn amber in direct light and tattoos up both arms. He is known to the brothers as Chris and he introduces his twin sister as Tara, she promptly drapes herself over Dean and the older Winchester basks in her attentions for a short while.

Castiel turns his attention from it, feels a momentary twinge of jealousy that is quickly squashed, follows Chris out of the front of the store and into a back room. This one is cool, clinical looking, with a comfortable looking chair in the centre, steel tables on wheels and a sterilising unit in one corner. The tools of the man's trade are laid out neatly on one of the tables, resting on a blue cloth and he instructs Castiel to remove his shirt. The former angel fingers the hem of the t-shirt for a moment, then pulls it over his head, laying it neatly to one side as the cool air caresses his chest.

Chris is over by the sink, looking at him through sharp eyes that seem to see far more than they should. Castiel slides onto the large chair, it is cushioned, but the covers are slick, easy to clean and he slips a little before he gets his feet properly rested against the bottom.

"Look," Chris pushes a hand through his long hair as he ties it back and Castiel catches a glimpse of a three tailed fox tattooed on his left wrist, "this is a permanent thing, you can't just change your mind once it's done. If you're not sure _now_ is the time to say it." He is washing his hands now, has his back to Castiel. "There are other ways to protect yourself from demons."

"I am certain," he tells the other man, watches him dry his hands and hears the snap of gloves being pulled on. It is a sound that carries and has certain amount of finality about it.

It is not a short process, though there is an artistry to it that Castiel finds that he can appreciate. It is noisy, although that seems to fade into a constant background hum after the first ten minutes, Chris seems to alternate between moving the needle quickly and confidently over Castiel's skin, and gently dabbing away spare ink and any blood that may seep through. Were it not for the pain, the former angel thinks that he would find it relaxing.

About half way through Tara comes in to check on their progress and Castiel takes a moment to study her. Aside from eye colour and hair colour the two are quite different. Where Chris is tall and muscular, Tara is short and slender. Aside from his face, Chris seems to have covered almost every inch of spare skin with tattoos, Tara is almost completely clear of them, with only the same three tailed fox on the inside of her right wrist. Castiel wonders if that has any significance.

He closes his eyes again, begins to recite exorcisms in his mind in an effort to take his thoughts away from the burning of his skin. He does not know how long he keeps them closed for, how long he tries to keep his focus on the words in Latin, but he is almost startled when he hears Chris' voice.

"Dean," Castiel's eyes flash open, sees the hunter stood in the doorway watching him, eyes travelling up the pale expanse of Castiel's abdomen, and if he could the former angel would be squirming under such intense scrutiny, then the eyes stop, make contact with Castiel's own and Dean smiles. It is quick, almost shy, and gone again in an instant, although the eye contact remains as it always does.

"Hey, Chris," he greets the man, comes closer and his heavy boots are loud in the almost silence, audible even over the equipment. "How's it going, Cas?" The former angel shrugs his right shoulder, gives Dean a lopsided smile. "Well you're almost done and once Chris has got you all patched up we'll go and get something to eat."

Dean is right and not ten minutes later, Chris is cleaning everything up and taping a dressing over the top along with some final instructions.

"Sam and Dean should have everything you need, keep the dressing on for a few hours, then take it off and leave it off, make sure that you keep it clean. Don't scratch, let it heal for about two weeks." He takes off his gloves and disposes of them while Castiel pulls on his t-shirt, feels the twinge of his chest as he moves but it makes him smile because that twinge, that pain, makes him feel alive. They shake hands and Castiel thanks him, is surprised when his eyes start roaming the walls like he is already trying to decide on his next tattoo. Chris is less surprised, he laughs when he sees it and claps Castiel on the shoulder.

Dean is bouncing from foot to foot as he waits, patience not something that he has really mastered, and Sam seems to be talking quietly with Tara, his forehead deeply creased with a frown and his hazel eyes occasionally darting to Dean and then resting on Castiel as the frown deepens. The former angel tilts his head a little, but does not comment on it and Dean is all but dragging them out and down the road to a diner.

Sam continues to watch Castiel throughout dinner, seems surprised when Castiel clears his plate before Dean, although this is also a surprise to the angel, and Castiel knows that Sam's unwavering gaze should bother him, but he does not let it. He grins and steals one of Dean's fries instead, which has Dean alternating between amused and annoyed. Castiel does not mind, has to grin, because he feels _alive_. He think thats is what has been missing.

**Thursday**.

Sam lies awake and listens to the sounds of his brother and Castiel sleeping. Even though he will not admit it to either of them, and he suspects that Cas is already aware of it, he is worried about something that Tara said to him the day before.

"_How long have they been together? Dean and Castiel?"_ _There is more to her voice than simple curiosity, Sam thinks that he hears envy as well._

"_What do you mean?" He does not ask it because he does not understand the implications behind her words, he asks it because he wants to believe that he has misunderstood them._

"_I mean how long has Dean been out of the closet for?" She huffs it, running her fingers back through her chestnut hair and Sam remembers that the last time they were here Dean had been much more eager to spend time with her._

"_It's nothing like that, Dean and Cas are old friends," they are alone in the front of the shop, but Sam says it quietly anyway, does not want to run the risk of Dean coming out of the back room and overhearing this particular conversation._

"_Sam, those two are something and it's not 'friends'," she looks at the fox tattoo on the inside of her right wrist, fingers the middle tail as she continues talking. "I'm not blind, the way he looks at him... I could be wrong, I'm sorry."  
_

The worst thing about the whole conversation was that it brought to the front of Sam's mind all of the little things that he has seen over the last three months, little things that he simply shrugged off as Dean and Castiel knowing each other. Now he is beginning to wonder if it is something else entirely and he wishes that Tara had kept her mouth shut.

Thing of it is, Dean is not like that. All of Sam's life Dean has been a ladies man, has been the kind of guy who can snap his fingers and have half a dozen women offering themselves to him in whatever way he wants them. Dean does not do guys, not that it would bother Sam overly if he _did_, it is simply that one of those irrefutable truths in Sam's life will have vanished.

If Dean does love Cas, and really that is a big '_if_', Sam suspects that he would never do anything about it anyway, which puts at bay some of the, frankly, disturbing mental images that have been assaulting him since he spoke to Tara.

Castiel is another matter, the angel has never been particularly good at hiding emotions, at least he has not been since he got cast out, so Sam _knows_ that there is a greater feeling there than just friendship. Fact of the matter is, he has been ignoring it. As Cas has gotten better at hiding the way that he feels about things, Sam has seen less of the telltale signs and so had written it off as his imagination.

The problem is that there is no one that he can talk to about this, about his suspicions, and if Dean ever caught wind of the _thought,_ let alone a conversation about it, Sam would be left on the side of a road before he could tell Dean that it does not matter either way. He is fairly certain that Castiel would either deny everything or not respond to the question, which would leave an uncomfortable atmosphere and even Dean would notice that.

His mind strays to Eden, to the way that she had looked at Castiel a few times when they were staying with her, and he realises that she knew all along, that she would have seen it in Castiel's mind when they arrived. It makes him wonder whether or not there is more to this whole thing than Cas has told them.

He rolls over, huffs a sigh at the ceiling. His mind is too busy for sleep and that is all that he wants. He needs to rest, needs sleep, and while he knows that he can do that in the car as they go to the next job, it will draw questions from Dean and the last thing that Sam needs is questions.

It is going to be a long night.


	9. Chapter 9

_Writers block is a crazed killer and I hate it, on the plus side, now that I've done this chapter I'm out the other side of it and into the parts that have been screaming to be written since I started this. I may have taken certain liberties with certain legends, in fact, I _know _I have but it works for the story._

Chapter Nine: Week the Thirteenth.

**Wednesday**.

Dean is dreaming, he knows this because he is in a room full of very attractive and very naked women. He also knows it because _he_ is naked. This he does not object to, nor does he have a problem with all the women, except that none of them are paying the slightest bit of attention to him and while Dean will admit that things have been a little slow in the area of female companionship lately, he finds that a bit insulting. Since this is a dream, he also finds it a little amusing.

Curious as to what it is that can hold the attention of so many women away from the awesome vision that is his body, Dean begins to make his way forward. It is a bit of a struggle, pushing his way through so many warm, soft bodies without touching any more than is absolutely necessary, Dean likes to play, but he does not touch without permission.

So he is fighting his way through naked women, and he has to take a moment to look at the room, or hall. It is dim, lit by the flickering of candles that cast strange shadows over everything and if he catches the faces of the women at the right kind of angle they do not really look like women at all. They look darker, more demonic and more than once Dean shies away from them.

There is a raised dais at the end, all in dark wood and on it is a bed, nothing fancy like Dean thinks that there should be in this kind of place, it is simply a worn down cheap motel room bed. He shoves his way closer, aware that there is a man and a woman that the gathered people of the female persuasion are watching and he wants to be closer, he wants to see who these people are. Besides, Dean likes porn as much as the next person, although the next person is Sam and Dean has to admit that Sam is more disapproving than anything these days, and since this is his head he would like to see.

The people on the bed are Castiel and Tara, and Dean thinks Castiel rather than Cas because this is the one of the future that will not happen. He has a beard, the same dead eyes and Dean can see the tracks on his arms from the drugs that he has taken. When he looks at Tara again she has changed, become someone else and Dean wants to look away, does not need to see this, does not want to see Cas so much as kissing another woman, let alone the sex. He cannot stop watching.

He eases forward, torn between wanting to make it _stop_ and wanting to join in, raises his hand and hears Castiel who is not Cas chuckle.

"Easy, Dean, you'll get your turn," he breathes and the hunter stills. Then it _is_ his turn and Dean really hopes that this is just a dream because otherwise someone is messing with him again and Dean does not think that he could handle that anymore, but because it is a dream everything is instantly glorious and even when Castiel changes into a faceless woman, to Tara, to another woman it is all wonderful.

By the time it is Castiel again, Dean thinks that he should be worn out, glances around him to see that the crowd is gone, and it is just him and Castiel and he reaches up to kiss him, only to find air there instead. He is alone on the bed, he is clothed and the lights are flickering out one by one.

"What do you want, Dean?" A voice asks and he thinks that it could be Tara, remembers the good time that they had together when he first met her, three days of bliss and sex and food at a time when his only worry was that he was getting ever closer to dying and going to Hell and damned if he was going to go quietly. He does not understand the question.

"What do you want?" Another asks and he knows this one as Sam's, sees his brother's gigantic form in the shadows. Hears the question from a dozen different places, a dozen different voices, knows some of them, does not recognise others.

"What do you want, Dean?" Castiel asks from right in front of him and this is present Cas, _Dean's_ Cas. His blue eyes are tired, ringed with bruised skin where he has barely slept for three days. He shifts, face turning into that of the drug addict from the future, turning again until it is the face of a man four days dead, bloated and dark and Dean recoils from that.

He is steadied by strong hands, turns and sees his father. John Winchester looks down on him through disappointed eyes, mouths something to him.

"I don't understand," Dean whispers, turning back to look at Castiel, voices still chanting the same question over and over, asking what he wants, asking what he needs.

"This is what you will make me," Castiel tells him, eyes dull, blank, trails of blood running from them in twin perfect tracks, "you will destroy me, Dean, just like you destroy everything."

They are in Hell, then, and Dean is naked on the rack with Castiel stood over him, knife in hand, eyes demon black. He whispers the fallen angel's name, begs with a dream for mercy.

He comes awake in a moment, skin bathed in sweat, breathing rapid, eyes darting in the darkness. Sam's soft snore across the room and the light breathing of the angel in the bed opposite tell Dean that everything is as it should be, that he has simply dreamt and all is well in the real world.

He relaxes back onto the bed but sleep is a long time coming and when it does it is filled with voices and with passion. There is the question, always the question.

"What do you want, Dean?"

**Friday**.

Castiel scratches absently at the still healing tattoo as he reads, feels Sam's disapproving gaze on him and stops. This is not the first time since he fell that he has been through the healing process, that does not make the itching any less annoying. He is looking through a stack of newspapers while Sam scowls at his computer screen. Both are looking for jobs, scouring the country for something just out of the ordinary enough to alert trained minds.

The atmosphere in the room is not comfortable, Castiel has found Sam to be a little bit distant with him since he got his tattoo and he has to wonder what Tara said to him. It gets better when Dean is around, but the older hunter is out getting lunch and Castiel does not believe that he is as oblivious to the tension between them as he pretends to be. It is making concentrating on the task at hand difficult, especially since every now and then Sam will glance up at him, when he thinks the fallen angel is not looking, and stare for a long moment. Sometimes it feels like Sam is trying to crawl into his head and Castiel finds that disconcerting.

Dean left not long ago and Castiel knows that he will be some time yet, that he had decided that the waitress was worth something more than a cursory glance. He feels a momentary flash of jealousy and aggravation when he thinks about that, though he is not sure if he is annoyed more with himself, Dean or the waitress, but he knows that there is little that he can do about it at this time. Maybe in the future, if Dean feels the same, and he lets that thought end before he can follow it up with the melancholy sigh that threatens to escape. Since Dean is not in the room, and there is no danger of him returning in the next ten minutes, Castiel decides that maybe he should confront Sam on his odd behaviour.

"Is there a problem?" He asks, turning to look at the youngest Winchester who guiltily turns his gaze away.

"No, Cas, no problem," Sam's smile is chill and he still will not meet Castiel's eyes. The fallen angel knows that he is lying, cannot think of a way to broach the subject without offending him. They lapse into tense silence, Sam is brooding as he searches for a case and Castiel is wondering what could have made the younger man so angry with him.

Dean will be back soon, Castiel realises, and he will notice this, he will want to know what has passed between them. This will cause an argument. It is not that Castiel has never fought with Dean since he fell, of course he has, because as long as he is in close proximity to the man every day and as long as he is feeling frustrated by not being able to establish what Dean feels for him, Castiel will sometimes become tired or annoyed and vice versa.

"It's just," he looks up as Sam begins to speak again, sees the hesitation in the human's eyes. "Someone," he pauses again, "Dean's not like that, Cas." Normally the words spilling out of Sam's mouth would not make any sense, except that something in the former angel's stomach goes tight as he realises that Sam _knows_.

Castiel's plan has always been to hide his feelings to the best of his ability, to wait until he has been able to gain some form of indication about Dean's feelings before confessing his own. This is not a welcome development and he has to wonder who it was that noticed, who it was that brought all of this to Sam's attention, because Castiel is certain that he has done a good enough job of hiding it from the youngest Winchester and he wants to be certain to _thank_ the informant for their interference. It is perhaps fortunate that he is saved the necessity of a reply by Dean's return.

"Damn, it's cold," the hunter says as he closes the door, not noticing the frosty atmosphere as he sets bags of still warm food on the table between brother and angel. All Castiel can think, in that moment, is that he is no longer hungry. He eyes the food with distaste, watches as Sam does the same and he considers, for a moment, grabbing his jacket and going for a walk so that he can pull his thoughts together, so that when he comes back he will be able to talk with both Winchesters without giving away the turmoil in his mind.

Dean grabs one of the burgers he has brought them, settles on a chair and takes a large bite before speaking again.

"We need to get you a heavier coat," he tells Castiel and the former angel looks startled at the words. "That jacket isn't going to cut it in this weather." Sam is eating his own meal in silence, eyes darting between them like he is searching for something and Castiel cannot find the strength to argue when he is being scrutinised in this manner. He simply nods and toys with his own food, trying to distract himself by focussing on the tightness in his chest, the tickle in his throat and the heaviness of his head. It draws a frown from Dean. "Something wrong?"

The former angel turns his attention Dean, not that he finds that overly hard to do, and feels Sam's eyes slide off him as he looks away. Neither speaks and Dean regards them suspiciously for another moment, still eating his burger. He shrugs after a while and Castiel relaxes, the last thing that he needs to do is try and discuss the less than friendly atmosphere that the older hunter walked in on. Instead he turns his attention back to his burger, begins to eat it again because he knows that if he does not it will simply draw more questions from Dean that he does not want to answer. It sits heavy in his stomach.

"Found us a hunt yet?" Dean asks and even though he has not taken his eyes off Castiel, the fallen angel knows that the older Winchester is talking to Sam.

"Maybe, I need to look into it a little more." Castiel sees Dean grin, excited at the prospect of a hunt.

He does not question why Dean does not like searching for jobs himself, he already knows the answer to that. As good as Dean is at finding hunts on his own, he gets bored easily, is not good at focussing for so long on one thing. He gets bored and a bored Dean is a dangerous one. Besides, there is no denying that Sam is good at finding hunts. Dean spends a lot of time, while Sam is searching for something they can kill, with Castiel, taking him out into the world and helping him become accustomed to the people and their habits. Castiel thinks that he enjoys doing it, even if, on occasion, the former angel feels a little like the new toy.

He is grateful, however, when Dean decides that now is the time to go looking for the new coat, suspects that on some level Sam is too, because it means that he can get out from under the intense gaze of the younger. It also means that he can spend time alone with Dean, this is always a good thing in Castiel's mind. If Dean notices the less than warm leave taking that passes between his brother and friend, he does not say anything and for that Castiel is thankful.

**Saturday**.

Sam has found a hunt. Granted this one is a little less obvious than he had been hoping for, angry ghosts are always a safer bet than this, but they need something and Sam needs to get his mind off Tara's words. He knows that he should not be angry with Castiel about the way he feels, the way that Tara _says_ he feels, but Sam cannot help but wonder if Dean really is about to break the habit of a life time and start batting for the other team.

Normally Sam would not make all that big a deal of this, a lot of people over the years have assumed that he and Dean are lovers and he did once observe that sometimes Dean seemed to over compensate. Sam is making this out to be more than it is because he thinks that he should have seen it, that _he_ should have noticed instead of Tara. He is also freaking out about it because he cannot broach the subject with his brother, cannot talk to the fallen angel to find out if it is true and cannot figure out if Tara was actually talking about Castiel at all, because now that he has spent the last three weeks watching them he is beginning to wonder if there may not be something on both sides.

So he is determined to stop looking and determined to stop watching, does not want to see at all. It may already be too late, but he has decided that if he just keeps his head down and finds a job to focus on, he may avoid having to watch a train wreck. That is how all this will turn out, he knows, as an utter train wreck. Castiel is too inexperienced and Dean is too jaded, if they really do love each other, and Sam is hoping this will all turn out to be a really close friendship because being stuck in a car with a smug almost married couple will eventually turn his stomach completely, they are both utterly oblivious to it.

If Sam is honest, he is not entirely sure about this hunt, something in his gut telling him that this is a really bad idea but at the same time it screams that it is something utterly unnatural. On finding this case, Sam's initial thought was that this was some kind of serial killer, except that the bodies are found every four days, dead of apparent natural causes. The police are keeping the fact that all of their internal organs are withered and damaged out of the media. When Sam mentioned the job the night before, Cas had frowned, seemed a little reluctant and then thrown himself into research.

This time it has been the brothers who have gone to question the families, Castiel has been looking decidedly unwell the last few hours, Dean thinks he may be coming down with a cold and privately Sam agrees. So they have left him to sleep or research and have gone to the families, who have given them precious little information. Sam feels like hitting his head against a wall.

When they get back to the room, Castiel is a picture of utter misery, his nose is red from rubbing and his eyes are blood shot. Dean goes into mother hen mode leading Castiel to a bed and telling him to lie down and try to sleep, because Dean may quite often have no sympathy for Sam when he is suffering like that, but this is Castiel's first cold and Sam supposes that he is going to offer the fallen angel a little bit of sympathy.

Castiel resists the assistance, resists the urge to lie down and give in and Sam can admire that a little. It also appears that whatever research he did has lead the fallen angel to an idea of what they may be dealing with. It is not the news that either Winchester had been wanting to hear.

"It's a Succubus," Castiel says, his voice more gravelly with the sudden onset of his cold. It turns Sam's blood to ice, makes this an even worse idea than he had previously thought, and now they will not walk away, because Dean is not like that.

"This is bad," Sam mutters, sees Dean's confused face. "Dean, every hunter who has ever gone up against one of these things has wound up dead. We need to get out of town."

"You would just leave such evil to continue it's course?" Castiel asks and Sam can hear the shock, can see something similar written on Dean's face.

"_We_ don't go after these things, they come after us!" He insists, wondering how the angel can possibly be so eager to paint an even larger target on his back.

"I know how to stop one," Castiel sniffs and Dean smiles, though he still looks concerned.

"You sure? Because you don't have your mojo anymore, Cas," Dean says it gently, like he does not want to point out to his friend that he is not as powerful as he once was.

"I will not need my grace to do this, merely holy water and the right exorcism," Castiel assures them with a dark glare at Dean. The oldest hunter ignores it, but insists that Cas teach them how to do it, just in case.

The fallen angel agrees, but even as the words leave his lips he is beginning to drowse. They leave him to it for a few hours.

**Sunday**.

The bar is quiet, she thinks as she looks around. It always is on this day and were she not looking for her next meal, she would not be here. She has existed for centuries and once upon a time, a good meal would have sustained her for weeks, allowing her to move over vast hunting grounds without concern. These days there are few such feasts, humanity is debauched and depraved and she wonders how much longer her kind can continue to roam the Earth.

There are many creatures in the world, other than the succubi and incubi, who rely on sex for their survival. The fall of man in such a manner has not been so detrimental to them. Those others simply take what they need from it, use it to their own purposes, succubi and incubi feed on the sin of it, the purity of that sin. This therefore means that the more innocent their victims, the better the meal. These days she is almost always hungry.

She will have to eat again soon, she knows, sooner than she likes, because the man that she will visit for the final time tonight cannot give her enough to sustain her until she reaches her next destination. She knows that she needs to move on, that she is drawing attention, but she needs the food more, the body that she has chosen to manifest is already withering and she needs that too. This body will allow her to reach into the minds of her chosen targets, to charm them and to touch them, but it is losing brilliance. Her hair, once full and blonde, is now lank and mousey, her eyes that once sparkled with promise are dull and the longer she goes without a good meal the worse it will get. She is beginning to get very desperate.

The succubus is not alone in that. Time has made it hard for her kind and the death of Lillith, though not unexpected, was a blow. They have continued, even with the loss of their queen, and they shall continue until they die out, which she believes will be far sooner than she had ever imagined.

Even though she is concerned that her appearance may affect her ability to find and secure a target, she knows that her body will make sure that she can. The more desperate she gets, the more powerful the pheromones she excretes become. The meal is more satisfying, however, if she has to work for it a little.

Her attention is caught by three men at the pool table. They are all attractive and all single, although that does not work quite as well for her purposes since nothing tastes quite so good as infidelity, what makes them good is that they are all strangers to this place, if something happens to one, or all, of them, they will not be missed for a while. They all have their draw, but it is the shortest one that she choses, because his innocence, his purity and lack of real sin, almost blinds her. There is a darkness on the edge of it, that part she sees which tells her about her target, a darkness which shows that he is not utterly without sin. He has taken actions that will have been frowned upon by on high, but there is a newness to this soul that she cannot help but want.

Marking him is a simple task, to add to his charms, he is almost utterly naive in the ways of both women and succubi. All she has to do is bump into him, her own soft flesh meeting the hard planes of his chest which just ups his appeal. This close she can tell that he has a cold, but she ignores that in favour of allowing gentle fingers to touch his neck, looks up to allow her green eyes to meet his blue ones. They stay that way for a moment and she can see the spark of attraction in his eyes, can see the faint curls of repressed desires and the inward flicker of guilt because that desire betrays his love for another. From one of the men behind her she can sense jealousy.

She would like to begin the process now, to reach up and steal a little snack in the form of a kiss, except that the sleeping mind of her current target, a man named Simon Walker, is calling to her. That man is to be her latest meal, and she knows that he will make a man with a brilliance such as this taste divine. This blue eyed, dark haired, man will be a feast to be savoured..

She feels his eyes on her as she leaves and concludes that he will be worth the wait. The power he will give here will be more than worth it.

_Reviews are an action figure Castiel!_

_Artemis_


	10. Chapter 10

_So I have some bad news for you all. I'm insane and have decided to take part in National Novel Writing Month during November. This means that I have to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days so I may not be able to get much work done on this during the next month. I'll do what I can and I have a few days off this week so I'll get as much as possible done as back up to post. Just thought I ought to let you know that I have utterly take leave of my senses._

Chapter Ten: Week The Fourteenth.

**Tuesday**.

Dean is becoming concerned, though he is not entirely sure whether it is about the hunt, Castiel, or his remaining sanity. Another body has been found, obviously dead since Sunday night, and they all know what they are going to find when they look at it, they all know what the cause of death is going to be. Dean wonders whether they really were stupid to stick with this. Castiel has a cold, is running a fever, and Dean is worried about him because this is the first time that the angel has been ill. As for his sanity, well, Dean would be the first to say that he has never really been in possession of a full bucket of that, but lately he has been having thoughts and dreams and _feelings_ that have made him question what little he has.

A loud, hacking, cough draws his attention away from his thoughts and back to Castiel, who is sat on the thread bare sofa with a scratchy wool blanket around his shoulders, a book in his lap and a mug of something hot, lemony and altogether vile tasting, in his hand. Dean hates cold and flu remedies, thinks of them as a waste of money and effort when a cold is a great excuse to stay in bed for a few days and make Sam's life miserable. Sam always gets his own back as soon as he gets the flu, but Dean can live with that.

The hunt is the reason that he has forked out for them this time, the last thing that Castiel needs is to be vulnerable when there is a hungry succubus on the loose. The fallen angel still looks miserable, though, his eyes are bloodshot and there is a tissue crumpled beside him in easy reach. He sniffs, takes a sip of his drink and pulls a face of disgust at it. Dean wants to laugh at that, even though a part of his brain thinks that it is actually quite cute and he pushes that thought away before it can take hold because he does not think such words. He only realises that he is smiling when Castiel casts a baleful look in his direction.

He wipes it off his face as Sam opens the door, letting a blast of cold air into a room that is too warm. Castiel shivers away from it and Dean frowns, taking in the pallor of the fallen angel's skin and the dark circles under sunken eyes as he coughs again. It makes him want to hustle Cas into bed but it also scares him, because Castiel is just too vulnerable now, if Dean thought the former angel was before he has revised that opinion.

Sam seems to think something similar, and Dean would be lying if he had implied that he has not noticed how distant Sam has been with Cas, has been hoping that it would blow over. Perhaps this will be what causes Sam to forget about whatever it is about Castiel that is bothering him. Besides, if Dean ever doubted that Cas was almost entirely human now, this is the proof that he needs, the proof that Sam needs. It scares him.

"Guy had cancer," Sam tells them, voice low but not taking his eyes off Castiel. "He would have been dead in three months." Dean barely sees his brother's eyes flicker to him, hears the words and processes the information but does not register the concern that is not just for his friend.

"So it wouldn't have been enough?" He asks, directing it at Cas and watching him sniff, take a drink and pull a face with the flicker of deeper concern.

"No, she will most likely have already begun feeding again. She will become more desperate, more dangerous, we need to find her," Castiel's gravelly voice, made more so by his cold, breaks and squeaks a little and it is enough for Dean. He takes the drink from his friend's hands, helps him to his feet and walks him to the bed.

"Alright, Sam and I'll go, you should stay here and rest."

"I should go with you," Cas is still resisting, still not allowing Dean to take care of him and while it is weird, to be looking after someone after so long of not having to bother, Dean kind of likes it.

"You need to get better," he insists, locking his eyes onto Castiel's and seeing the fever there. "Me and Sam can handle this, you're no good to us if you fall over." Hurt flickers across Cas's face and Dean feels a momentary pang of guilt for kicking the guy when he is down. "Just let us handle it, ok?" Castiel nods, lays back and shifts until he is comfortable, dark hair even more mussed from where he has allowed himself to slide against the pillow. His blue eyes slip closed as the brothers go to the door, but Dean keeps on watching him until he is outside, until he has seen Castiel's breathing even out a little.

It is not until they are driving to talk to Simon Walker's family that Dean realises that he put Castiel in _his_ bed.

**Wednesday**.

Castiel has died before, when he dared to face an archangel and defy the orders of his superiors. This is nothing like it, in fact, death, that kind of death where it is quick, messy, feared and resisted, is far more preferable to that which he now experiences.

He knows that he is not dying and this sickness is exactly that, an illness which Sam and Dean both have suffered through a dozen times in their lives and doubtless they will continue to do so on occasion for the rest of their lives. When he first began to experience these symptoms a week ago, Dean did not seem overly concerned, he was simply told that this is a cold and not to worry overly because everyone gets them at some point.

_Now_, however, Dean is worried, which actually just makes Castiel feel guilty because Dean should not be worried for him. Thing is, the former angel does not just have a bit of a sniffle anymore. He is alternating between violent shivers and extreme sweating, his eyes feel like they are burning and his nose has gone from constantly streaming to bone dry. For the last two days all he has had is warm water, because it is both the only thing that he can keep down and the only thing that he can swallow without utter agony. His throat has been ripped raw by the coughing, lungs are so tight that he wheezes and all the muscles in his chest and abdomen are screaming from the abuse the coughing fits have put them through.

On top of that, he _aches_ right down to his bones. He may not actually _be_ dying, but at this stage he thinks that he would prefer it. Castiel has not been properly conscious all day, hearing Sam and Dean talking as if from a great distance in the background all day. He knows that they are concerned, can hear it in their voices although their words mean little to him, he is simply no longer one hundred percent certain what they are worried about. Part of him thinks, and hopes, it is because he is so ill, but another part of his mind, a part that skitters away from him when he tries to grasp at it, thinks that it is because of the hunt. The trouble is, he cannot quite bring to mind exactly what that hunt was.

After that, Castiel drifts into a restless sleep, dreaming of his time as an angel, of his time with Dean. When those dreams fade, Castiel finds himself in a bar, there is a woman there, with green eyes and sandy hair. She is familiar, he has seen her the last two nights in his dreams, she is the woman who bumped into him in the bar. There is something about her that is wrong, something about her that sets alarm bells ringing in his mind and body. In spite of that, he cannot stay away from her. She calls to him and he finds himself drawn to her.

She is so different, he thinks, from the women that he has met, the brash outspoken women that Dean prefers, the ones who sell their bodies to anyone with the money to pay for a service. He knows that this is a dream, an imaginary personality and a part of him wonders why he has chosen this woman when he could just as easily retreat to his dreams of Dean. It makes even his dream self hesitate in kissing her and green eyes that were once warm turn cold with annoyance. Her hands are on his cheeks and he feels the pull of lust coil in his stomach but there is still the thought of Dean, there in the fore of his mind and on the edge of his awareness and he tries to pull away.

"You'll give in eventually," she tells him and though her voice is slightly rough around the edges, he finds that it is one that he could listen to for hours on hours. It is almost enough to make him turn his back upon the hazy image of Dean in his mind. Her voice is intoxicating as words spill from her lips to pull him in ever closer, words like _lover_ and _sweetheart_, promises of bliss and love and satisfaction like he has never had. Eternity with her.

He can hear Dean calling for him, telling him to wake up and he struggles more, keeps struggling even as the dreams shifts again and he is on a bed, naked, with her standing at the end of it. She is confident in her own nudity, confident in the reaction such a state draws from his own body and Castiel curses it for betraying him in this way, for betraying the fact that much as he loves Dean, much as he wants to spend all of time with him, the fallen angel can also acknowledge the carnal beauty of the daughters of Eve. Watching her actions only makes his body want her all the more and he closes his eyes against the image of the dream, still seeing it burnt there, and feeling the bed dip as she comes to lie next to him, to trail long fingers across his chest.

When she speaks again, whispers his name, Castiel does not hear a rough, smoky voice. He hears something else, a hiss and a growl, a murmur of something not human and he realises why this felt right and felt wrong. His eyes snap open and she is no longer the sweet girl with sandy hair and green eyes. She is pale, drawn, with black hair that hangs limps to her knees and eyes that burn with fires behind pale blue. She is not beautiful, she is simply another form of death, starving and desperate. He tries to start the chant, the exorcism and the words die in his throat. He wishes that Dean knew and could save him, is sorry that he never told the hunter the truth.

**Thursday**.

It is barely gone midnight when Sam hears the feverish fallen angel make his first proper noise in hours. Truth be told he has been more than a little worried about him over the last few days, even with the less than friendly atmosphere between them. The last thing that Sam wants is for Dean to realise the reason that he is upset with Castiel at the moment, so he is keeping quiet, and even then those reasons have no baring on the fact that Cas is obviously very ill. Besides, Sam did not miss the way that the woman in the bar looked at the angel, nor did he miss the way that Castiel responded with the sort of look that told the younger Winchester that he might actually have _wanted_ to sleep with her. There was something else, however, that Sam noticed and that was the way that Dean watched the exchange. Sam knows his brother, knows him far better than Dean realises, and he could see the jealousy in his brother's stance, in the way that he stiffened at the way Cas and the strange woman looked at each other.

He has not mentioned any of that either, though holding his tongue is getting harder and harder now, mostly because he has too many other things to worry about and even beyond Castiel, the primary one is the hunt for the succubus. This is night number three since the last victim and given that when Cas was lucid enough to think he believed that she would have to feed again very soon, they are on a clock. Dean's attention, on the other hand, is not on the job at all. This cold and fever has hit the fallen angel so hard that Dean seems to be on the verge of taking him to hospital, coupling minutes of research with trying to lower a fever that has climbed steadily throughout Wednesday. It both warms Sam and frightens him to see Dean get so close to another living being, he is all to aware of how lonely the job can get.

Castiel has barely been conscious all day, and when he has been there has been little more than a murmur to show for it before he drifts out again. The sounds coming from his lips now are not the fevered rambling of a man too ill to know what he is saying, it is something of a shock to realise that they are actually the low rumblings of the exorcism the angel taught them to use against the succubus. He frowns, glances at Dean who is closer anyway and the expression on his face is enough to tell Sam that Dean has come to the same conclusion he has.

The fallen angel has been getting progressively worse over the last few days and Sam does not think that it is simply the cold anymore. Dean has gone to one of the duffles, is riffling through it and Sam knows that he is looking for the holy water. Since Dean is looking for the liquid part of the ritual Sam strips off the blankets, leaving Castiel naked to the waist, then grabs a marker and sketches a quick devil's trap on his chest, a task made more difficult by sweat and laboured breathing.

He turns to check on Dean's progress and sees his brother stood at the end of the bed, stock still, eyes a little wide and worry filling them. Sam hisses his brother's name quietly, watched Dean shake himself from his reverie and open the cap of the silver hip flask he holds. Sam recognises it as one of their father's and finds that he is hardly surprised that Dean kept it. The engraving on it is old, so much so that it has worn and faded a little from the rub of suspicious fingers, an ancient symbol of the holy trinity. Castiel's mumbling is not coherent, Sam can tell that he is missing words here and there and he moves to one side so that Dean can sit on the edge of the bed and lift Castiel's head, watches the tenderness in the way that his brother treats him. It is then that he realises how utterly oblivious Dean is to the way that he treats Castiel, utterly ignorant of the change that Sam sees when he is caring for his friend.

Castiel bucks when Dean pours the holy water down his throat and the cry that comes from his lips is not just in his voice. The sound is almost feminine, Sam thinks because there is something evil in it as well. Dean holds Cas steady and Sam begins to chant the exorcism, lips stumbling a little over the unfamiliar rhythm of the words. Every now and again Dean pours more water into Castiel's mouth, leans on his chest to hold him still as he fights it.

They continue together, Sam chanting and Dean dripping drop after agonising drop of water down Castiel's throat. It feels like hours before Castiel falls still, before he stops fighting against the water and goes limp and even though Sam thinks that this could be a trap, Dean is still there, leaning in and checking Castiel's pulse, hands on either side of his face as he tries to wake the fallen angel. When Cas arches upwards, head pushed back into the pillows and eyes clenched shut as a ragged scream passes from his lips, it comes as something as a surprise. The devil's trap lights up, burns red on Castiel's skin for a moment, then swirls upwards as the succubus is evicted and killed. If the situation were not so serious, Sam would think that it was quite pretty.

He can hear Dean talking quietly to Castiel, hands on his knees now that the angel is beginning to come back to consciousness. His voice is low, reassuring, and though Sam knows that Castiel has just been through something terrible he can see a smile playing on the angel's lips. He watches for a moment when Dean rises, pulls the blankets back up over Cas and letting his hand linger on one shoulder before he looks back at his brother, sees that he is being watched, and moves it away.

Castiel's recovery from this one is going to be long, Sam knows this, and given the condition that he is in, Sam also knows that they are not going to be able to leave the motel room for at least a few days. Somehow what he is seeing here, between brother and friend, is beginning to quiet the worries and concerns that Tara brought up. There is something genuine here, between them, and Sam curses himself as a fool for not taking the time to watch them a little sooner. It makes him come to a decision. Dean obviously feels something for Castiel, Sam is not one hundred percent sure what it is, but it is deeper than friendship, and therefore he is going to get his own room for the next few days to give them a little space and encourage Dean to figure out what it is that he wants, or at least to work out that he wants something. Besides, Sam needs some space of his own, has been with Dean and Castiel both without a break for too long. He needs to think and adjust and there is no better time for him to do that than when Castiel is recovering.

**Friday**.

Gabriel's Father is starting to ask questions, starting to demand answers that she knows He already has. The problem that Gabriel has is that Dean and Castiel are fascinating, addictive, in the way that they dance around each other, Castiel always watching, waiting and hoping , Dean always confused and afraid and wanting. It is distracting her from her true task and she cannot keep avoiding it, rather she is going to use it to push everything in the right direction, to push Dean and her brother closer.

She still has to locate the demon, the one who has been chosen to replace Lillith as the final seal, and lock her away in Hell. At the moment this one, Sawenna, does not have the drive to try and release Lucifer again so soon, is waiting and allowing her power to grow. This one wants revenge against Dean and Castiel who worked together to foil her plans. With Gabriel watching them, even with the hex bag that protects Castiel from Sawenna's magic, the demons have become wary, she has destroyed more than one of them for getting too close. Now it is time to change that, just as Dean and Sam are skilled at hiding themselves from angels and demons both, Sawenna is just as skilled at hiding herself from Gabriel's eyes. Now the archangel is going to have to put some effort into finding her and she cannot bring herself to leave Dean and Castiel to their own devices without there being someone to watch them. She knows exactly who she is going to chose.

The tattoo parlour is closed when she appears in there, the sky outside already dark and heavy, the setting sun hidden by the kind of clouds that threaten snow. The interior smells strongly of disinfectant and she can hear two quiet voices in the room behind the shop, one male, one female, both frustrated. One of the many things that Gabriel knows is that it is never a good idea to appear in a room with two kitsune unannounced, they tend to change to their fox shape and vanish. If she were not an archangel that would be a major problem. Right now, however, finding them would simply be tiresome and she is not in the mood to hunt down either party to get them to do her bidding.

Unlike many nonhuman creatures in the world, the little fox spirits have adapted to the times. The rare males are able to flit from woman to woman producing offspring with none of the ties that go with it and the females are able to marry and divorce almost on a whim. They still live for a long time, Gabriel thinks that the longest lived kitsune was somewhere in the region of two hundred when she passed, they simply age slowly. Gabriel _likes_ the kitsune, aside from their near constant drive to mate and produce young they are quite pleasant and unobtrusive. They no longer try to kill men or make deals with them, they no longer need to, and as a species they might make it to the true apocalypse to fight at the side of humanity. They also make brilliant spies, able to track any human they have had sex with for up to seven years after the act. Which is why she has chosen this pair, because the female, Tara, has slept with Dean Winchester and the male, Chris, inked them. She does not particularly care if either one wants to do this. She has her ways of persuading them.

When they see her, both freeze and they at least have the sense not to run because that would just annoy Gabriel. She looks at them both for a moment, one covered with tattoos and the other with golden eyes that take in her appearance and hold just the right amount of fear.

"What do you want?" The male demands, brave for his sister even though Gabriel knows that he is terrified of the being that has appeared before them.

"I have a task for you," she responds, "I need you to watch over some persons who are of interest to my Father."

"Can't He do it himself?" The female demands.

"Of course, but He has other matters to attend to. You know, of course, Dean and Sam Winchester?" Both nod, and Gabriel knows that Tara, at least has realised where this is going. "You also know Castiel, my brother." She has surprised them, and that gives her some satisfaction. "My apologies, fallen brother. I want you to watch over them, Dean and Castiel in particular, and alert me should they come to harm or danger." Chris seems eager enough to agree to that, anything to get the archangel out of the store, he knows that she has something, some kind of greater hold over them or she would never ask this. Tara is another matter.

"Why should we?" She demands and something black and disgusting twists inside Gabriel's soul.

"Because if you do not, I will tell them what you both are. They are hunters, they will kill you without a second thought." Gabriel does not know if this is true or not, actually she does not much care if it is, she simply knows that they will believe it, too many of their kind have been killed by hunters over time.

Chris lays a hand over his sister's, a silent order to keep quiet, to tell her that they are going to do this regardless of the female's opinion. Gabriel nods, gives them final instructions, tells them where to find the trio and tells them not to be seen, heard or noticed.

She leaves in a flutter of wings and a flash of lightning, off to complete her own task and mourning the loss of entertainment.

_I have taken a great number of liberties with the kitsune legends, but since Supernatural quite often does the same I didn't think it would matter too much. Tara and Chris are actually cast offs from another fic that I never finished and I hated leaving them to rot. They suited my purpose here though so they actually get their airing._

_Artemis  
_


	11. Chapter 11

_I'm working hard on getting as much of this done as possible before I abandon everyone. But I had to get this out because I can't leave you all with Cas just exorcised and all._

Chapter Eleven: Week the Seventeenth

**Monday**.

It has been a little over two weeks since they killed the succubus and Dean is quite firmly of the opinion that those are one form of supernatural creature that he never wants to go up against again. Facing her made him face the reality of Castiel's change, of Castiel's fall, because his friend nearly _died_ and Dean thinks that it was all because he was not paying attention, that he should have known when he saw that girl that she was not human.

He has been confronting a lot of thoughts that he has been ignoring while Castiel has been recovering, sleeping so that he can regain strength lost through both the fever and the succubus attacks. He wonders how many years may have been shaved off Castiel's life by the two successful visits and hopes that it is not enough that Castiel will die before he does. He does not like that thought, the one where Cas dies, does not know what he would do if he lost his friend and conveniently ignores the fact the Castiel died once already, which tied his guts into knots, because he came back and that gives Cas something of an indestructible quality.

They moved on from the last motel in a matter of days, Dean insisting that Sam stay in the room with Cas and him until the angel was well enough to move so that if they need anything Dean would have help. Sam agreed, though Dean did not miss the hesitation there, but insisted that he needed his own space for a few nights some time soon. Dean had to allow that, somewhat reluctantly, because they have been in each others space rather a lot lately. Besides, now that he and Cas are alone Dean is enjoying himself, at least he does when Cas is awake.

When Castiel is asleep there is little that Dean can do other than think about what has happened over the last several months, think about the fact that he does not want Castiel to go back up to Heaven and how he cannot quite figure out why that is, just that he knows his life would feel emptier without the fallen angel. That admission shocks him and so he does not mention it to anyone, not Sam, and most certainly not Castiel.

After a little over two weeks, however, Cas seems almost normal again, still a little tired but Dean can deal with that. They are sat on his bed at the moment, Dean is insisting to himself that it is because the view of the tv is better, each with a beer, Castiel's eyes are on the set and he is outright laughing. The sight and sound of it warms Dean in a way he has never thought of before.

They are watching Shrek, a movie that Dean has seen a dozen times in his life and one that he had never considered would appeal to the fallen angel. The story line is simple to follow, a new take on an old fairy tale, but Cas seems to enjoy it well enough and Dean has to admit that he had never thought that even after wanting to watch it, Castiel might _like_ it. He does not pay much attention to the movie itself, he knows the story well enough to pick it up at any point, he is more focussed on Castiel, on the angel's reactions to it than he is anything else. It is nice to see Castiel look so happy, look so alive without any of the fear or pain that has animated him in the past.

Towards the end of the film Castiel seems to notice Dean's eyes on him, seems to feel the intensity of his gaze and he turns his attention away from the screen for a moment, eyes dancing with mirth and head tilted in question. Dean has been drinking, he knows he has, but he cannot blame the beer for what he does next because three beers would never usually have this kind of effect. They are close, so close to be almost touching and it is a simple thing to lean closer and press his lips against those of his friend.

Castiel makes a noise of surprise deep in his throat, leaning into the kiss a little and beginning to respond. Dean brings his hands up and deepens it, tangling fingers in short dark hair and feeling Castiel's own hands rest lightly on his back. The touch is like a shock, jolting him out of whatever impulse it was that had lead him to initiate this in the first place. He pulls back, stares at Cas who opens his eyes and Dean can see confusion there, hurt that covers something else which flickers away so quickly that he thinks he may have imagined it.

For a long moment neither of them says anything, although Dean can see words that are dying to be spoken all around Castiel's lips. It is tempting to lean in again, to silence the questions and erase the worry that he can see, to kiss the fallen angel again and see how far they can go but for one thing. Dean does not swing that way, never has, and to feel this kind of want, this kind of need for another man has him so far off balance that he is terrified.

"Dean..." at the sound of his name, the hunter does the only thing that he can think of, he bolts, just grabs his jacket and heads out of the door, slamming it behind both to make a point and to prevent himself from looking back because he knows that if he does he will not be able to stop himself from doing something even more stupid.

When he returns much later he is not alone, does not pay any attention to the fact that the woman he has brought with him is the exact opposite of Cas or that he does not really find her all that attractive, just needs something to take his mind off his actions earlier, off the thoughts and images that have plagued him for weeks even though he has never admitted it. All that matters is that the room is empty and she is willing.

Even when he is lost in her, he still sees his friend's face, does not hear the door open or see the person who enters, he just keeps going, lost in his own fantasy and pleasure.

**Tuesday**.

Castiel has not stopped moving since he walked in on Dean and the woman, he thinks of her as that somewhat loosely and also acknowledges that he is perhaps being a little too harsh on her. His cell phone has rung so many times that he has turned it off. He knows that it is at least Sam, if not Dean, trying to find out where he is and if he is alright, but he cannot bring himself to answer it, to let either one of them talk him into coming back.

He is a fool, he knows this, a fool to think that Dean would kiss him and be content with it, be happy to let it lie. Except that he allowed himself to hope that maybe this could be different, maybe Dean could see how he felt and be happy with that. He stuffs his hands deeper into the pockets of the thick coat Dean bought him, black wool that the hunter said was far more in keeping with the way that he looks than a military cast off. There is a roll of cash in the bottom of one pocket, money that he won out of Sam and Dean when they were all practising pool, money that he tried to give back to them but they insisted he keep since he won it fair and square.

He is grateful for it as he approaches a bus stop, looks for one that will take him somewhere, anywhere, that is not this place. Part of him is telling him to go back, to spend the rest of his time here with Dean and continue to try and establish how he feels for him. He tells that part of him to shut up. He can see quite clearly how Dean feels, can see the disgust, because otherwise he would not have sought out that woman. In the end he simply picks a random destination, checks his remaining money as he boards and wonders if this is really something that he should do.

Castiel does not want to leave, not with only the clothes on his back and two hundred and eighteen dollars in his pocket, but he thinks that maybe this is for the best. He needs to clear his head, to process all that has happened to him and he cannot do that if both of the Winchesters are demanding answers from him. His money cannot last forever, he knows this all too well, and eventually he will have to find more, earn it or steal it and he balks at the thought of the latter.

For a brief moment he thinks he sees a familiar face as he sits on one of the less than comfortable seats, looks again and does not see anyone so writes it off as a figment of his imagination. Instead he shuffles closer to the window, rests his head against the cool glass and stares ahead, not even seeing the plain grey of the back of the chair in front. It is not until the bus pulls out of the depot that he realises that he has no where to go and no one to turn to.

The actual journey itself is not long, a couple of hours and they have reached their destination. Now that they are further north, Castiel can really feel the bite of the cold on his hands and face, keeps his fingers curled inside his pockets as he trudges to the nearest diner to get something to eat.

He orders coffee, dark, hot and sweet, allows it to warm the chill from his limbs, even if it cannot touch his heart, but cannot make a decision on what he really wants because the only things he has really eaten have been the things that Dean has chosen for him. In the end he orders a chicken sandwich with a salad and a slice of hot apple pie. The salad is limp, but the sandwich is good and when he eats the pie it is all he can do to keep from collapsing in a quivering heap over it.

Once he has eaten he takes a moment to consider his options. Now that he is here, in a strange town and on his own for the first time since he fell, he is beginning to think that he made the wrong choice, to think that maybe he should have stayed and buried his feelings on the matter. Certainly this was not the way to deal with it. On the other hand, he has not been alone like this since before he found his Father and the opportunity to do his own thing for a little while is tempting.

He orders more coffee while he thinks on it, wonders on what he is going to do, pulls out his cell phone while he thinks and switches it on. The little device promptly starts buzzing and ringing as a dozen texts and missed calls start to come through. He cannot bring himself to read them, cannot bring himself to listen to the voicemails that he knows are waiting, so he turns the phone off again. He is fairly certain that Dean does not even know why he left, that Dean probably does not even know that he walked in at such an inopportune moment.

The thing is, the thing that bothers him the most, is that while he knows that such actions are normal for Dean, he is hurt that Dean chose to go and find such a woman after kissing him. It does not do to dwell and he comes to his decision, he will take some time to himself.

He pays his bill as he leaves, offers a smile that does not reach his eyes to the woman who served him and returns to the bus depot. It will not take long for the brothers to work out how he got out of town and part of him is thankful for that. As angry as he is at Dean, he does not really want to be away for too long. He just hopes that when he decides he wants to go back the will still have him.

**Wednesday**.

It was Sam who noticed that Castiel was missing on Tuesday morning, which he figures is just his luck, stumbling into his brother's room, with his eyes full of sleep and his only thought being coffee and food, to find his brother in bed with a woman and no sign of their fallen angel. The words that had issued forth from his lips would have made a sailor blush and Dean's only response when Sam had asked where Castiel had gotten to was to say that he thought they were together. It was all Sam could do not to hit him.

Dean got the picture fairly rapidly and they have been searching for Cas for the last couple of days. Sam has to admit that he is annoyed, more than annoyed, and he is not sure which one of them has got him more angry at the moment. What he does know is that Dean, at least, is going to feel it, because Cas would not have run off the way that he did if Dean had not done something.

Castiel left town, they know that much because they saw him on a bus while they were driving around town looking for him. The problem is neither one of them saw the destination and though Cas has a little money, both know that it is not going to get him very far or last him all that long. They are both worried about him, although Sam can acknowledge that Cas is more than capable of taking care of himself because they showed him how to do that. Dean is having a harder time of admitting that, is far too busy blaming himself even though he will not say why he is so convinced that it is something he did. Sam knows that given what the fallen angel obviously feels for Dean walking in on his brother and a girl had to be awkward, but he cannot figure out why that would make Castiel _leave_. He also cannot work out why Dean is taking the blame for this quite so harshly and he is almost afraid to ask.

Since Tuesday morning he has spent his time as a buffer between the general public and worried, self hating, Dean. This is never a nice side of his brother and it is one that Sam hates to see, one that he hates that Castiel has managed to bring out even if it was not intentional. Either way, both have been trying to reach him and whether it be by text message or simply calling, Castiel has not responded. When the phone is on it simply rings until it diverts to voicemail, but more often over the last day it is off and that makes Sam wonder whether it is because Cas turned it off, or whether it is because their constant calls wore down the battery.

Sam's messages tend to be to the point, asking where he is, asking him to call them and at least tell them that he is safe and if he does not want to come back he does not have to. Part of Sam does not want him to come back, the larger part of him does, because Castiel has been good for Dean. Dean does not leave messages when Sam is listening, he wonders about that, the older hunter will simply hang up and try again. Sam did catch him leaving one, however, when he returned from the bathroom at some easily forgotten gas station. To hear his brother apologising for something, even if Sam did not catch exactly what that was, breaks the younger Winchester's heart.

They know that they cannot hunt for him all the time, know that it will not be like looking for their father because Castiel does not have anything like the contacts that John Winchester did. They will look anyway, at least until Cas tells them to stop, and Sam sincerely hopes that this will be ended sooner rather than later because he is not sure how much of this Dean can take.

When he gets the call, they are sat in a diner somewhere, Dean looks at him sharply and Sam shrugs as he pulls his cell phone out of his pocket, not able to hide his surprise when he sees Castiel's number come up.

"Sam," Cas does not wait for him to speak and he can hear exhaustion in the fallen angel's voice.

"Where are you?" He demands and cannot help but be shocked when Castiel tells him that he is no more than three hours drive away. "You want us to come and get you?" He does not let his annoyance show, bats Dean's hand away when he tries to take the phone, half expects Cas to say no, to say that he does not want to come back.

"If that is acceptable to you," Castiel sounds beaten, downcast and broken and Sam would dearly like to know what it is that caused the angel to run off in the first place so that it can be put right, or so that they can at least attempt it. He has a feeling that it has to do with Castiel realising that his feelings for Dean are not reciprocated, even if Sam can see that they are, and needing a little time to think. Sam does not exactly blame him having seen more than his fair share of Dean and the opposite sex over the years.

Dean's relief is palpable and even though Sam knows that there will be more than the usual share of shouting once they have Cas in a motel room, he does not let that worry him, rather he hopes that certain truths may air so that he can finally see this resolved one way or the other.


	12. Chapter 12

_Ok, so last night's episode has officially made this a complete AU, there's a surprise. I have to say that I loved it all the way through though. I'm pleased with myself, I'm on track for NaNo, I've gotten this done and up only eight days after my last chapter and I started the next one too. This makes me happy._

_I just want to thank all of my readers and reviewers really quickly, the support I'm getting is making this an absolute joy to write and I wish I coud devote more time and attention to it than just an hour here and there when I'm not driving myself insane with word counts and meeting a daily target.  
_

Chapter Twelve: Week the Twenty First.

**Thursday**.

Dean is drunk, almost blind drunk. The last four weeks have been hard, on all of them, and he knows that most of it is his fault. He dwells on it whenever he is alone, which is most of the time these days since he cannot look at Castiel without thinking about what it was like when he was kissing him. Distancing himself from Cas has been his choice, the last thing that he wants to do is talk about what happened, about what he did, because that just leaves the door open to long and awkward moments and he does not want to be in that place. He would rather bury the whole incident and forget it, except that he knows that has never worked out all that well for him in the past and if he is quite honest he doubts it will work out all that well for him now either.

Earlier in the evening he turned down at least four potential bed partners for the night, has been doing the same for the last month or so, because his head is just not in the right place to be looking for sex. Besides, now that he is so drunk he can hardly see straight and the bar tender is telling him that he has had enough, Dean thinks that he is hardly attractive to them anymore anyway. He accepts the invitation to leave quietly for what it is, a threat of alternative action if he does not get out _now_, and stumbles away from his stool at the bar. Once he is upright, or as upright as he can get, he takes a moment to ponder on how truly pathetic it is that he spends his evening drowning his sorrows alone, then meanders out with a forced smile that just barely keeps the melancholy at bay.

He knows that Sam has spoken to Castiel a little bit about why he took off, knows that Cas has not actually _given_ his reasons to Sam. He also knows that the angel wants to talk to _him_ about the whole thing, wants to understand and given that Dean can barely comprehend it himself, he is not sure what he would say to Cas to make it any better anyway. It is childish, he is well aware of that, but he is hoping that if he just ignores the whole mess it will just go away again. Which is what it is doing, going away that is, because Sam has accepted that Dean and Castiel are just not talking about it, and Cas has resigned himself to not understanding. Dean knows that Cas hates that.

That thought makes him smile, for the first time in weeks, and when did he turn into such a freaking _girl_ anyway, because he can see in his mind the way that Cas tilts his head when he does not understand something, the way that he ferrets through everything until he finds an answer to his question. This need to look into things, the drive to get answers, makes him a great researcher which makes any and all jobs that they take on easier, in fact just having three of them makes the job easier because two can go to the victims and their families and one can stay home and research all the while relaying information back and forth. It works for them.

Besides, like Dean has admitted to himself before, privately only, he does not know what his life would be like without Castiel around, does not know if this whole gig would work anymore without Cas. He tries to tell himself that it is simply because he is accustomed to the fallen angel's presence but deep down he knows that is not the case. Deep down he feels something for Castiel that goes beyond friendship and beyond the bonds of brotherhood that he still has with Sam. That emotion scares him, terrifies him, and over all of it there is the urge to kiss Castiel again.

His baby is still in the parking lot where he left her, her black paint gleaming in the combination of artificial light and moonlight that peeks out from behind heavy winter clouds. His breath steams in front of him in a way that would normally alert him to supernatural activity and for some reason, even with all of the worries and the awkward atmosphere in the car some days, that makes him feel better, feel right. Up until the point where hands that are shaking, from a mixture of the cold and far too much alcohol, drop his keys onto the tarmac by the driver side door. He mutters a curse and sinks to his knees to try and fish them from under the car, cracking his head against her as he tries to stand and realising that maybe driving was not the best plan after all.

"Dean," the voice sends a shiver that has nothing to do with the cold through him and he wonders why the fallen angel is out this late, wonders why he is even at this bar. The angel offers a hand to help Dean to his feet, given his drunk state the hunter accepts it gratefully. He always forgets that Cas is stronger than he looks, because while he and Sam have a lot of muscle going for them, Cas is still quite lean looking, so he is surprised when the fallen angel hauls him to his feet and then takes the keys from his other hand.

"What the hell? Give those back, Cas," he demands, not because he _wants_ to drive, he knows that he is in no fit state really, but because he has to fight it or his image, not to mention that his morals as far as his car is concerned, will be questioned.

"You are in no condition to drive," Cas responds, herding him around to the passenger side and all but pouring him in, "you're far too intoxicated." Sometimes Dean wishes that he would talk like everyone else, then remembers that this is part of what makes Cas who he is. He tells his rambling, drunk, brain to shut the hell up as Castiel starts the car and eases her out of the lot, is pleased to see that the angel is careful with her, keeps below the limit and his eyes on the road. He is also glad that is was Cas who came to find him and not Sam because right now he is drunk enough to start talking about the root of this whole problem anyway.

"I'm sorry," he says instead, hears Castiel make a surprised noise but keeps his eyes on the road still. "I don't want you to go back," because when they picked Cas up one of the things that Dean had said was to tell him that if he was not happy with all of this maybe he should go back upstairs.

"I don't either," Castiel responds, and Dean thinks that he hears something crack there, "but it's looking more and more like a possibility each day." Dean does not respond to that, does not think that there is anything that he can actually say that can make it any better. "Go to sleep, I'll wake you when we get to the motel." Blue eyes flicker to him for just a moment and Dean can see the sorrow there, is fairly certain that in the morning he will not remember that this conversation ever took place.

Castiel's cell phone rings, Reef's _Place Your Hands_, Dean justifies it by saying that it seemed appropriate to the fallen angel at the time, now he thinks that it is anything but. Cas never objects to it, does not change it, just accepts it.

"Sam," he speaks quietly, one hand on the wheel and Dean can see that this is not natural to him. "We are on our way back to the motel," the hunter's eyes are getting heavier now, lulled by the rough tones of Castiel's voice and the purr of the car's engine, the way that she responds to Cas's touch almost as neatly as she does to his own.

He does not hear the rest of the conversation.

**Friday**.

Castiel has to find amusement in Dean's hangover, which the hunter is taking out on anyone in the immediate vicinity, because if he does not see the funny side of it, the temptation is to cry. He has accepted that Dean does not wish to talk about the events of a month ago, that does not mean that he has stopped_ wanting_ to talk about it.

Part of him wonders if he should tell Sam, tell the younger hunter and then hope that it does not get back to Dean or that Sam is not so freaked by the whole thing that he also clams up. Besides, this whole thing is between him and Dean anyway, even though Castiel suspects that Sam knows something, so the people talking about it should be the two involved in the act.

He had called Eden, before making the call to Sam a month ago asking to be picked up, and told her what had happened. Eden was at least understanding of all of it, reassuring him that Dean was most likely confused and would come around in the end. Castiel does not like to think of the time frame that 'in the end' puts on everything because that sounds like a lot more than the five weeks that he has left on this Earth in this form.

If he thought Dean would listen, Castiel would tell him everything that he thought about in those forty or so hours that he was alone. He would tell him that he had replayed their kiss in his mind over and over and found nothing about it that he did not like, except the way that it ended. He likes to think that, in spite of Dean's reluctance to talk about it, Dean enjoyed the kiss too.

These are all things that he thought about when he was alone for a day and a half, more than, and things that he will more than likely think about again in the future. He has to know, cannot spend the next five weeks wondering, cannot spend the next five weeks avoiding the subject and watching his every move so that he does not try to gain a repeat and end up scaring Dean away, or getting himself left at the side of the road.

So when Sam approaches him, asks him what is going on, asks him to tell the younger hunter why things are so tense and why he ran off all those weeks ago, he is tempted. Castiel will acknowledge one thing about him, the younger man is tenacious. His response is the same as it has been every time that Sam has asked over the last few weeks, however, he smiles and he shakes his head and he tries to walk away. Unlike every other time, this time, Sam stops him.

"Cas, we need to talk about this, it has to stop," they are outside where Dean cannot see them, Castiel had left the room under the pretense of going to get them some lunch since Dean did not manage to keep breakfast down.

"This is not the place, Sam," he glances at the door and then pulls the younger man away, "and truthfully I don't know that I should say anything to you about it." He expects Sam to be upset but instead the younger man nods, though his face is a little sad.

"I know, Cas," he responds, "but I don't think that this is going to work out if you don't tell me."

Castiel has wanted to tell someone for so long what happened between him and Dean. He has wanted to share the hope that flared so brightly for such a brief moment, hope that still sparks whenever he feels Dean's eyes on him no matter how foolish he knows it is now. He decides not to speak, however, because if anyone should hear the thoughts that are racing through his mind it should be Dean.

"I appreciate the offer, Sam, but this is between Dean and I," he tries to walk away again, feels Sam grasp his arm once more, and hears the jangle of car keys as he is pulled to the Impala.

"Get in," Sam hisses. It occurs to Castiel, for a moment, to refuse to follow this order. He does as he is told, clambering into the passenger seat as Sam starts the engine, pulling out of the parking lot before he speaks again. "Look, I know you're carrying a torch for him, ok," Castiel shudders in surprise at that, had not realised that Sam was quite that insightful. "It's just, you can't run off every time he brings a girl back."

"That's not why I left," he replies after a moment of hesitation. "I am well aware of your brother's preferences. I needed time to think." Hazel eyes turn on him, intense, questioning. "I was confused. Dean... he kissed me and I was confused." Castiel does not think that anything he could have said could possibly have surprised Sam more, had not even planned on saying it before the words had slipped out of his mouth. Now all he wants to do is to take them back, awkward silence fills the car and he shifts with the discomfort of it all.

"Dean, you idiot," Sam breathes finally and Castiel is relieved that he is not questioned on the validity of his claim, relieved that Sam is not shouting or casting the blame in his direction. "I'm not going to make excuses," Sam tells him, then, as they pull into a diner across town, "he shouldn't have done it," and he does not elaborate on _exactly _what it is that Dean should not have done. "I sort of know why he freaked, though. Dean doesn't normally go for guys," Sam thinks on it, "actually he never goes for guys."

The discussion ends for a moment while they order their food, order something to take back for Dean as well, this is not something that they want to run the risk of the general public overhearing. Castiel knows that if he is still confused over the whole thing, Sam must be reeling pretty heavily right now too.

"Look," Sam speaks again when they get back into the car, the smell of food filling the air, "Dean just needs time to screw his head back on, ok? Eventually he'll figure out what he wants, you just need to give him time."

Castiel nods, even though he wants to say that time is a luxury he really does not have. He wants to tell Sam that in five weeks he goes back up to Heaven unless Dean can work out what he wants in a manner that is favourable to the fallen angel. He wants Sam to understand that it was not just confusion over _being_ kissed, or even over _who_ initiated the kiss, it was heartbreak and despair that made him leave the way he did. The same heartbreak and despair that makes it hard for him to look at Dean most days and made it hard to make the call to come back. He wants Sam to understand all of this, but more than that, he wants _Dean_ to understand it too.

**Saturday**.

The vixen peers out from under the large black car, her fur is dark and flattened against her from the rain and she is shivering slightly from a combination of the cold and the wet. Beside her sits a slightly larger dog fox, his own fur still dry and sleek, puffed slightly to warm him, his golden eyes are turned away from the vixen and focussed wholly on a door to a motel room.

She shifts, turns her attention to her brother for a moment. He glances away from the door and bares his teeth in something that is a cross between a warning and a smile. She settles again, resting damp head on wet paws and continues to watch the door, heaving a sigh against the cold, wet and apparent boredom that she seems to experience. It brings the male's attention upon her once more, this time accompanied by a growl and she stills.

Several hours later, when it is clear that none of the occupants of the room are going to emerge again that night, both crawl out from under the car. This night is clear now, still cold, but the moon shines bright above them, giving a sickly cast to everything that it touches outside of the orange circle from the street lamp. The pair pad lightly across the parking lot, watching for any creature, human or otherwise, that might mean them harm. They do not go far, to one of the rooms that is in utter darkness just out of the sight line of the room that they were watching.

The shadow of one blurs, morphs and changes, becoming for a single moment a fox with three tails before they all grow inwards and in the place of the larger animal stands a man. His body is covered from head to toe in tattoos, the designs and styles of each varying. Some look very old, others are fairly new, one is even still healing. The only one that is not utterly surrounded is the one on his left wrist, a fox with three tails that he scratches for a moment before stretching. The vixen leans against his legs, wet fur brushing against bare skin and there is a growl while she waits.

The door opens with little trouble and once she is through the door, she too seems to melt out of her own shape and becomes human. Unlike the male, who seems to be comfortable in his nudity, she reaches for a robe, pulling the heavy material around her and rubbing at too cold arms to try and bring some of the life back too them.

"Oh for crying out loud, Chris, go and put some damn clothes on," she snaps, keeping her back firmly turned. Unlike her brother, her skin is all but unblemished, the only marking is a tattoo of the same fox on her right wrist. They do not bother with the light, neither needing it since their vision is still heightened from their time in their other form.

"I'm going out again in a minute," he tells her, "caught an interesting scent that I want to check out." Tara shrugs and heads for the bathroom, flipping the light switch and bathing the small room in a too harsh light. She glances once at her brother as he walks out of the door, waits until he has closed it behind him before stepping into the bathroom and turning on the shower.

The hot water feels good against skin numbed by hours sat under a car in the cold and wet. That is a part of her existence that Tara hates. The wild side of her that longs for the outdoors and the crash of the elements against her fur, the drive to watch a potential mate for hours into the night. It is a practice used by many of her kind over the countless centuries of their existence, one that she has used a dozen times in her twelve decades of life, to check that a prospective mate does not have any convenient extras, like a wife.

She is not a young one any longer, has birthed seven kitsune cubs and more children that she wishes to remember. Her cubs are all out in the world somewhere, most of her children are dead, only five are alive in the world now and not a one of them knows what happened to their mother. She washes her thoughts of them away with the soap that she has lathered across her body, it may seem callous to a normal human, but she learnt to cut ties with anyone and anything not kitsune a long time ago.

The sound of the door slamming shut jolts her from her thoughts and she turns off the water, scooping up a towel as she steps out of the shower and wrapping it firmly around her before opening the door to look at her brother. He is shivering from the cold, now, and his skin has a faint sheen to it.

"Find what you were looking for?" She asks, rooting through her bag for a pair of pyjamas to change into.

"Demons," he tells her.

"Here in town?" She asks, dressing quickly and then using her towel to start drying her hair.

"Nah, sis, Germany," he gripes as he makes his way to the bathroom. "Nothing to worry about, they're mostly lower level and they can deal with that. Did you use all the hot water?" She glares at him, waiting until the door is closed before slipping into her bed, but she cannot ignore the worry that coils deep inside her, the thought that Chris is not telling her everything and that this may be far bigger than either of them should be involved in.

**Sunday**.

Sam is not quite sure what to make of Castiel's revelation from Friday. He knows that the fallen angel was not lying, knows that Castiel would never make something like that up, no matter what his feelings for Dean might be.

The younger Winchester knows that Dean does have feelings for Cas, has seen them in action. This kiss is the only time that Sam knows Dean will let those feelings catch him off guard and truthfully, it explains a lot about the last few weeks. It explains why his brother has been avoiding the fallen angel, it explains the despair that has been all over Castiel's face since they picked him up from the all but nameless town, another one in a long list of towns that they do not remember and cannot name anymore. It sounds militant, but he supposes when you have been travelling all your life and have passed through so many places you tend to forget the ones that do not stand out.

Castiel has relaxed a little now that he has told Sam the truth, although he still regards the younger man with wary eyes and the hunter thinks that it might be because Cas expects him to reveal the conversation to Dean at any moment. Sam has no wish to do that, does not want to cause more fireworks than there has already been.

Sam is not sure how he feels about all of this, knowing that Dean actually _kissed_ Cas and that he obviously enjoyed it enough to go out and find a way to reassure himself that he still likes women. That is not the only reason that Sam can think of for the behaviour, because even if Dean had not enjoyed it he would have been out of the door and off to find himself a girl so fast that poor Cas would never have known what had hit him. What Sam _does_ know is that if Dean had not enjoyed it, he would not have hesitated. He knows his brother that well at least.

Sam wonders how he can convince Dean that this is alright, even though nearly two months ago he was freaking out himself over the idea that his one constant in the world might actually be changing the habit of a life time and turning to bat for the other team. Part of Sam still hopes that is not the case, but he knows that it is a futile dream because there is enough evidence piling up to tell him the opposite. At the very least, Dean cares deeply for Castiel, or he would not be beating himself up so harshly over something that happened a month before and he is being so hard on himself that he does not see that Cas has already accepted the unspoken apology, long before the drunken ones from three days ago, and has moved on.

Except that the fallen angel has not moved on, not really, he is sinking back into old habits, picking at his food and spending hours at night reading or writing and Sam is beginning to wonder if maybe he should just lock them in a room together for a few days. The more he thinks about it, the more he wonders if maybe that is not the best idea he has had in a long time. If it were to work, they would probably be happy enough together that after letting them out, Sam could get a decent head start.

He decides that he will give them a little longer before resorting to drastic measures, after all Cas may eventually put two and two together himself and if he does, Sam really hopes that he pushes the issue and gives the younger brother some advance warning, because Sam wants to be at least in another state before they start knocking boots, as the phrase goes.

Sometimes his train of thought really makes him wish he just did not have a brain. He blames the number of times that he has been choked over the years, then goes to search for a way to scrub the mental image of Dean and Castiel together from his brain. It is the last thing that he needed before bed.

_So, I'm hoping to continue this trend and have another one up next Friday, fingers crossed._

_Artemis_


	13. Chapter 13

_Why is it that when I have something else that I am supposed to be doing, this comes incredibly easily? Because I was supposed to spend my day off working on my NaNo, instead I am working on this. That doesn't say much for my dedication. Oh well, week off next week so I'll have plenty of time to catch up. I have one question, would anyone object if the rating for this went up to the next level? Because I'm toying with that.  
_

_Again I want to thank everyone for their support and reviews, you have no idea how uplifting it is to open my emails and see them all sat there shiney and pretty when I'm beginning to question my writing for this NaNo.  
_

Chapter Thirteen: Week the Twenty Second

**Thursday**

Dean knows that Sam knows something, or at least that his younger brother _thinks_ he knows something. What Dean needs to know is what conclusions Sam has come to, needs to know what his brother thinks he knows. He wonders if Cas finally broke and said something, because even though Dean knows that the former angel can keep a secret, he also knows that Sam is very good at getting people to spill their guts, metaphorically at least.

The hunter glances at the sleeping form of his brother, envious of the fact that, no matter what the younger Winchester may think he knows, it is not keeping him awake at all. The only reason that Dean has not gone out to find himself a nightcap of any description is that Sam has told him in no uncertain terms that if he continues to drink as much as he has been, Sam is taking the car, taking Cas, and leaving Dean behind until he sorts himself out. Dean finds it odd that for a long moment he freaked more about Castiel going than he did about the car.

As his thoughts drift back onto the fallen angel, so do his eyes. Castiel is finally asleep, after three days of fighting against it with the kind of stubbornness that puts both Winchesters to shame, and for the first time since Dean kissed him, he can see his friend relaxed. Cas looks younger when he sleeps, his dark hair mussed from tossing and turning earlier in the night and the faintest of smiles graces his lips. Dean finds that he misses seeing his friend smile, he finds that he misses a lot of things that his actions of five weeks ago changed. He has had a lot of time to think about all of this, to think about the things that he misses and the actions that he took, to draw conclusions from them.

He regrets freaking out, he has worked out that much, because if he did not regret that he would not have spent the last month trying to forget that it had happened. Whatever impulse it is that pushed him into kissing the fallen angel has not gone away, it is getting more and more powerful every day and he knows that eventually one or other of them is going to mess up and that he will kiss Castiel again and probably make things even worse. That little smile, however, even in sleep makes something warm and unbelievably tender wash through him, something foreign, unidentifiable and utterly terrifying. It is almost enough to make him go out and find a drink, no matter that it is three in the morning. He does not, forces himself to sit down and examine this emotion because alcohol has only ever hidden his problems from him and something about the way Sam keeps telling him to fix this has finally filtered through.

Fact of the matter is, he did not freak because he kissed Cas, Dean has done a lot of things that were downright stupid more times than he cares to think about. He freaked because he _liked_ it, he freaked because he realised that he has wanted to do that for a long time, because he wants more and needs more and has never felt like that about another guy before. He freaked because after everything that he has taken from Cas and everything he has pushed Cas into doing over the last two years, this is the last thing that he should be asking of him, the last thing that he should force the fallen angel into doing, the last thing that he deserves to have.

There is the gradual building of panic there, at the realisation that what he wants from Castiel is not the friendship that he has been cultivating all this time, that he does not want Cas to have a normal life, that he really _does_ have a reason for not wanting Cas to go back up to Heaven and it is not the reason that he has been deluding himself into acknowledging. The realisation of all of this is what makes him get out of bed and grab his keys and jacket, eying the motel room door with something like distaste and he hears Castiel shift behind him.

That deflates something, some need to go out and prove that he is still a man in the grand scheme of things. Everything that has ever been stable and constant to him is now in question. Before Dean could be safe in the knowledge that after Cassie he would never open his heart to another woman, not after the way that she tore it out, that he is a ladies man, that the deepest his interactions with the majority of the male side of his species will ever go is a short bonding moment in a bar or questioning about a case. That the only three men he will ever feel close to are Sam, Bobby and his dad. That is turning on his head. Dean has never been bisexual, or even bi-curious, except for now, except for Castiel.

He sets the keys back down, tosses his jacket onto a chair, a leather jacket that once smelt of his father and reminded him of a childhood he should never have been subjected to, sits on the edge of his bed and really looks at his fallen angel. He considers how he is going to handle this now, how he is going to cope having identified the root of his problem, having shied away from putting a label on _that_ feeling because labelling it makes it very real. He wonders if telling Cas would make him feel obligated to try and return the feeling. He wonders if this is just some passing moment of infatuation, even though when he tries to pinpoint the exact moment this all started he cannot, and he wonders if there is something very wrong with him.

The conclusion he draws saddens him because even with this feeling that is slowly clamouring to be acknowledged, to make it's presence known, Dean knows that he is still himself, he is still Dean Winchester through and through, and even if he admits to this, whatever this is, even if Cas wants to try it, he knows that one day he will screw up and he will hurt Cas and he will hurt himself and the worst of it is that he will not be able to help himself. Dean _likes_ women, always has, always will, but he _wants_ Castiel, even though he suspects that simply getting what he wants will not do the trick, that Cas has crawled so far under his skin that he is never coming out again. Besides, Castiel is new on Earth, new to all of these feelings and Dean cannot pressure him into something when the fallen angel cannot possibly sure what he wants, Dean cannot break the habit of a life time for something that Castiel might do because he is confused or alone or just desperate to be accepted. He cannot change himself for something that may not be real.

At the same time, Dean is not sure that he can get on with his life, that he can be civil to Castiel, when all he wants to do is jump the angel's bones and see how far they can get. He wants Cas, he thinks he might... he cuts the thought off and he wonders if maybe, just maybe, it would be better for all three of them if Castiel decided to go his own way.

**Saturday**

Castiel thinks that since he told Sam about the root of the difficulties between him and Dean, he should feel better. He does not, in fact as the week has passed the fallen angel has only felt even worse about the whole situation. Sam has been accepting of it all, right up to and including the fact that Castiel is rather more attached to Dean than he perhaps should be, accepted the idea that Dean kissed Castiel because apparently Sam knows something that Castiel does not. The former angel does not like to ask what that may be.

Castiel dearly wishes that he could simply walk up to Dean and demand an answer, wishes that to do so would give him the answer that he deeply desires. Except that he knows that is impossible, purely because to demand to know whether or not Dean loves him would be to receive a blunt and absolute denial, even if the kiss that Dean gave him and freaked out over says otherwise.

As it is, Dean has been strange with him the last couple of days, more so than he has in the last five weeks and Castiel worries that he is planning something, something that might go directly against the things that Castiel actually _wants_ and he wonders if Dean is letting his fear over his actions dictate his path now. He does not think that Dean has even considered the possibility that Castiel may have actually enjoyed the kiss and he does not think that pointing it out right now, when Dean has been doing everything in his power not to be alone in a room with him, is the right course of action to take.

Eventually, however, Sam takes matters into his own hands, leaving to get dinner one evening without even offering to take one or the other along with him and Castiel realises that they younger Winchester has reached the end of his tether. He also realises that this is the closest that Sam is going to get to locking them away together whilst still being subtle about it. He decides to take the opportunity to do what he should have done in the first place, he decides to take the bull by the horns and confront Dean.

"Dean..." he begins to speak and is shocked when Dean cuts him off.

"I don't want to talk about it, Cas," he snaps and Castiel mentally back peddles, feels anger bubbling inside him at the assumptions Dean has made, even if they are more than likely the correct ones.

"You don't even know what I was going to say," he hisses instead. "What I would_ like _to know is what I have done to deserve such treatment from you." This is not the way that he wanted the conversation to go, not the way that he wanted to open things. The words are said, however, and he is now going to have to live with the consequences of them.

"How am I treating you, Cas?" The hunter demands. "What have I done to you that is _so_ bad?" As soon as the words are out of Dean's mouth the hunter seems to know that he has left himself open for a response involving exactly that which he wishes to avoid discussing. Castiel takes the opening.

"You have all but ignored me for the last five weeks, when you bother to talk to me it's _obviously_ something that you find distasteful and I am at a loss to understand _why_."

"You were the one who ran off," Dean points out, not willing to back down.

"And _you_ were the one who _kissed_ me, then left to find some _girl_ so that you could reaffirm your masculinity with no thought to how I would feel about the whole thing or react to it!" Castiel deflates a little as soon as the words are out of his mouth, staring at Dean who looks like he has been struck in that moment. Both stare at each other, eyes locked and mouths moving as each looks for something to say, for some suitable response and in the end Castiel cannot take it any longer, cannot take the silence, needs to get out from under the intensity of Dean's glare and the implications behind their words.

If Castiel needs to get out, he realises that Dean needs it more when the hunter mutters something under his breath and grabs his jacket, making his way to the door and Castiel knows that they cannot leave it all like this, that his outburst may have made the situation worse. He reaches out to stop the hunter and the broken expression in Dean's eyes makes him drop his hand.

"Dean..."

"I just... Cas, I just need..." the other man scrubs a hand over his hair. "Dammit," he snaps and is out the door in an instant. At the sight of it Castiel feels something in him freeze, feels something in him give up and give out and he knows that he cannot be in the room when Sam gets back because the younger man will have questions and Castiel does not want to answer them, does not know if he can answer them without breaking down. He decides to take a walk.

His first instinct is to find Dean, he knows that they should not be alone when they are on the trail of a group of demons, but he also knows that it will cause a continuation of their argument, one that will make the atmosphere between them even more uncomfortable. If there is anything that he wants for his last month here, it is that he and Dean at least be civil with one another. So he walks, picking a random direction that he can at least be half certain Dean did not take and he just meanders through the streets, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his dark wool coat to ward off the chill of the night air.

He spends hours walking around, replaying that conversation with Dean over and over as he does so, stopping only once to buy a cup of coffee to warm hands that have become sore with exposure to air that is far colder than he has experienced so far. It is dark by the time that he realises that he has gotten himself completely turned around and that if it was a bad idea to be out alone in a town riddled with demons during the daylight hours, it is a much worse one to be out alone at night. Castiel decides to turn back, to return to the motel room as he feels his cell phone vibrate in his pocket for the first time in hours. The sound of his name being called behind him catches his attention and the fallen angel turns.

He is not sure what surprises him more, the fact that the man who called his name is the same man who tattooed him and is lying naked and dazed on the floor, or the fact that three demons are staring at him with expressions that can only be called hungry. He hesitates, torn between the obvious need for him to run for his life, and the desire to help the man lying prone and shivering in the wet.

"We've been looking for you," one of the demons says and this one is built of almost solid muscle, his head shaved and his eyes obscured completely by the black of possession. One of the others, a smaller man with dark skin and little hair aims a kick at the fallen man's abdomen, makes him shout with pain and Castiel darts forward to try and help him only to find his arms being held by the third demon, a tall man, thin with blond hair and hazel eyes. He struggles, trying to free his arms and shouting in the hopes that someone, anyone, will hear and try to help. It is a futile hope and even though he does his best, he cannot break free of the demon's hold.

As the dark haired one strikes at Chris again Castiel feels something strike him across the back of the head and he knows no more.

**Sunday**.

It is just gone midnight and still there is no sign of Castiel. Sam is concerned, but looking at Dean he knows that his concern is nowhere near on the scale that his brother is experiencing. He has been pacing the room for the last hour, cell phone against his ear and muttering under his breath. When it is obviously diverted to voicemail again he watches and listens as Dean leaves another message, as he worries about the fallen angel, tells him to get back to the motel so that they can sort this mess out, tells him that running away again is not going to solve anything and finally, that if he thinks he can pull stunts like this all the time then this time he can stay gone. Sam knows that Dean does not mean it, that if Cas were to call for him, Dean would go and help him just as soon as he was able.

The younger Winchester was less than impressed when he returned to the motel room to find it empty, found himself hoping that Dean and Castiel have sorted out the whole issue surrounding the kiss and had gone out to celebrate. When Dean had arrived back on his own Sam had realised that he was an idiot to think that it could work out. There are many things that he wants to say to his brother, none of them particularly nice, and while he knows that Castiel's secret is not his to tell, he is on the verge of spilling it anyway.

Dean is still trying to reach his former angel, and when the phone is answered this time, Sam is watching and he knows that it is not the voice that Dean wanted to hear on the other end, especially when the older man signals for him to be quiet and puts it on speaker phone.

"_...I must say, I was very disappointed when you got dragged out of the pit, Dean,_" the voice is low, feminine and there is an undercurrent of madness there. Sam realises that this is the demon who has been haunting his brother for the last five months.

"Where's Cas?" Dean demands, refusing to rise to the bait and start talking about old times. "I swear, if you've hurt him..."

"_Hurt him? Now why would I do that? After all, he never did a thing to me._" There is bitterness in her voice and Sam opens his mouth to speak, is silenced by Dean holding up his hand. "_Here's how this is going to work. I'm going to give you the chance to find me, _just_ you, no brothers, no angels, you've got three days, find me and I won't touch a hair on his pretty little head, fail and I won't guarantee that you'll recognise him when you get here._" The line goes dead, no more clues, no more talking.

When Dean finally looks at his brother, Sam can clearly see the devastation in his eyes, the doubt and the self loathing and the blame that rests all too squarely on his brother's shoulders. He knows in that moment that even though Dean has barely admitted it to himself, his brother loves Cas and cannot live with the thought that his actions might get the angel killed.

"What's the plan?" He asks. "You know it's a trap, right?"

"Yeah, I know," Dean reaches for his coat and keys, pocketing his cell phone and taking a moment to pop up the collar of the old leather jacket against the cold that he knows he will feel when he goes outside. "Got to find him though."

"We can't just rush in there, Cas can hold out for a few hours while we work this out," Sam tries to keep his voice reasonable but, what with his argument with Castiel and now talking to an old demonic acquaintance, Sam can see that his brother is on the edge of breaking down, right on the verge of losing it entirely and he does not know how to make that right.

"She won't wait, Sam, not even for a few hours, she's going to start cutting into him and the longer we leave it the worse it will be." This would not be the first time that Dean has lost all reason when someone he loves is in danger but it is the first time that Sam has seen it applied to anyone outside of the tight knit group that has been his family over the last few years.

"You can't just go rushing in!" Sam snaps, not able to understand why Dean cannot understand this. "You won't help Cas if you get caught."

"It's _my_ fault he's there, Sam, and I'm not going to let her..." He breaks off and Sam waits a moment for him to pull himself together again before he makes a suggestion.

"Ok, but lets try and figure out where he is before we rush into this." After a long moment Dean nods and sets his keys down again, waiting while Sam calls to get the GPS on Castiel's cell phone activated. The few minutes that they wait for the tell tale dot to appear on the map seem like the longest in their lives. When nothing happens Dean tries dialling the fallen angel's phone, Sam can tell from his expression that it has gone straight to voicemail, which means that it is either switched off or that the phone has been destroyed, Sam is willing to bet that it will turn out to be the latter rather than the former.

Dean is all but ready to race out of the door in that moment, to start searching for his friend the old fashioned way and Sam cannot think of a way to calm him, to make him take a step back and think for a moment. They need a plan and even though Sam knows that Dean knows that this demon will not wait before she starts cutting into Castiel, this _is_ a trap, there is no way that the demon will release Castiel once she has Dean, no way that either of them is getting out of this without some serious back up and there is no time to bring that in. It is right about now that Sam wishes that they could contact the angels.

A knock at the door startles them both into action.

_Evil cliffie of doom! I've been waiting to get to this bit for so long that it's been distracting me, now it's down and I can focus on other things._

_Artemis  
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	14. Chapter 14

_So my new theory is that if I finish this I might actually concentrate on my NaNo. Besides, this is just going so well for me now that I _have_ to get it done._

_Love out to my reviewers again! They really make my day.  
_

Chapter Fourteen: Week the Twenty-Third

**Monday**

Dean regards the women in the room with suspicion. It is twenty four hours since he found out that Castiel had been taken by the demon he once worked with in Hell, twenty four hours since he realised that if he had just been a little more willing to talk about what happened between him and Cas this whole situation could have worked out so much more differently. There is little point in dwelling on the whole issue, however, he needs to fix the mess that they are in now and that means having to work with these two, both of whom he does not trust even if it is for different reasons.

Gabriel he does not trust because she is _Gabriel_. The archangel who never so much as lifted a finger to help them the whole time they were trying to stop the apocalypse. Tara is another matter, Tara he used to trust, until she banged on their door in the middle of the night, stark naked, shivering and haggard looking. The story that she told them would have read like the deranged rambling of the unhinged, except that Dean has found that the deranged rambling of the unhinged quite often has a grain of truth in them. In this case, Tara knew that Castiel had been taken, that Chris was taken with him and when she told them how she came by this information, Dean was sorely tempted to reach for the silver bullets.

That was the moment that Gabriel stepped in, much to the hunter's chagrin, and demanded to know which moron's brilliant idea it had been to let Castiel get caught by a psychotic demon. If Dean had thought that it would do any good he would have punched the archangel right there and then. Given that he already knew what the result of that would be he managed to restrain himself. Dean was too frustrated to explain what happened, so Sam had given them a summary of what he knew. They are still planning how to rescue Castiel and Dean is chaffing at the delay, so far the only thing that they have agreed on is that the demon, Sawenna, is Gabriel's task. Eventually he goes outside, says that he needs some air, needs to clear his mind. What he actually needs is to get away from Sam, get away from Gabriel and get away from Tara.

Dean has never been good at waiting for things to happen, sure he waited twenty three years to get his revenge against the thing that killed his mother, but that was simply because Azazel went to ground and stayed out of reach. The same goes for everything that he has even gone up against. Right now he is waiting for his brother, an archangel and a _kitsune_, of all things, to decide that it is time to rescue Castiel from the worst demon he could fall into the clutches of.

"You're an idiot," Gabriel says from behind him, "you do realise that, right?" The archangel has colloquialisms down to a fine art, Dean thinks that it is from so long watching humans as closely as she has.

"Why's that?" He asks. He already knows where Cas is, Tara gave them the address so it is not much of a stretch to think that he could take the colt or the knife and head to the abandoned building and try to rescue Cas himself. That plan was one of the first ones rejected by the gathered party.

"My Father gave you a great gift, an opportunity, and you're letting it slip through your fingers." Gabriel tells him. "How long do you really think Castiel has left here? He's the one who found a Father who didn't want to be found, who stayed loyal when all others gave up hope and helped prevent an apocalypse that neither angel, demon or mankind were ready for. He was never going to be abandoned here for long."

"What do mean?" Dean asks and Gabriel shakes her head. "God's gonna take him back? Because Cas told me that he doesn't want to go back."

"Before this whole mess he probably didn't," Gabriel agrees and Dean notes that she is not in the least bit surprised or intimidated by the heated anger in his tone. "Can you give him a compelling reason to stay now, though? Is there something for him to stay for?" Gabriel asks before retreating. Dean watches her walk away for a moment with the distinct impression that there is something that he is missing. He puts it out of mind, he has a job to do and a fallen angel to save, an apology to make and then maybe, just maybe, he can set about figuring out a good reason for Castiel to stay, one that he will be able to say without freezing and without freaking out.

Much as he would like to use the colt to save Castiel, Dean is aware of the draw backs. One, it is noisy and will definitely draw attention, two, it has limited ammunition and Dean has no idea how many demons they will be up against. Fact of it all is that he is tired of waiting for Sam, Tara and Gabriel to agree on a plan, is painfully aware of the fact that the longer they leave it the worse off Cas will be and he has no desire to risk Castiel's life further by marching in with the three of them at his back. He cannot wait.

He knows that this is a trap, he knows it as well as he knows the fact that the fallen angel will not thank him for getting captured, but Dean has to try and save him anyway. He justifies it, as he pulls the knife from the trunk of the Impala, by telling himself that the demon, that _Sawenna_, will be expecting him to go and try to rescue the fallen angel with others in tow, because no one is stupid enough to go up against a demon of her level without back up. No one except _Dean_ apparently.

If anyone notices the Impala rumble into life, no one comes out to of the motel room to try and stop him, Sam does not call to find out where he is going and Gabriel does not pop in. Some part of Dean finds that suspicious, it is silenced by the larger part of him that is entirely focussed on getting Cas back, getting him out of danger so that the hunter can find a way to make things right again even if he only has three weeks left. He wonders if there is a way to get Castiel to stay, because as much as he is freaked out by the way that he feels, he does not want to think about life without the angel.

He parks about three blocks away from the abandoned apartment block, as much as he loves his car he knows that she is loud and distinctive, parking three blocks away and walking the rest means that he may still be able to keep something of the element of surprise. Dean is not certain whether or not the demons are on high alert, knows that even though there is only one guarding the entrance there could be dozens just inside the door. Still, it is a simple matter to walk up behind the demon on guard, cover his mouth and slam the knife between his ribs and into his heart. Ordinarily Dean would spare a thought for the man he may once of been, but tonight his thoughts are too heavily on Castiel. He makes his way inside as silently as he can.

"You know, Dean," a familiar female voice says, "I knew you weren't the brightest, but I still can't quite believe that you came on your own."

**Tuesday**.

Castiel props himself against a wall that has most definitely seen better days, touches long fingers to the lump at the base of his skull and the other to his abdomen, frowning at the damp feeling there. Chris stopped screaming three hours ago and the fallen angel does not know if that means that he has finally passed out, Sawenna has lost interest, or the kitsune has died. Morbidly, he hopes that it is the latter.

He shifts again, shrinking more into the corner of the room as they open the door to his prison. Ordinarily he would make a bid for freedom, except that he is in pain, a result of his last foolish escape attempt and even though he knows that he should get out and get away, he cannot leave Chris to that fate, cannot leave the kitsune in her hands. Besides, Castiel has to believe that Dean will come for him, with his brother and friends at his back, because if he does not hold on to that hope, then he does not believe that he will make it through this relatively unscathed.

As it turns out, Dean _does_ come, it is simply not in the manner that Castiel had expected. Where the fallen angel had been hoping for Dean to charge in guns blazing and smart mouthed comments galore, he is simply tossed in the room with little ceremony, Sawenna looking down on him as he struggles, dazed, to his feet. This is the Dean that Castiel is most familiar with, in a way, the one that is defiant right up until the very last moment. The one who knows that the odds are stacked against him, but will fight until his very last breath. She smirks and gestures, flinging Dean against the wall with a casual flip of her hand, a gesture that she has made more than once in Castiel's direction and he can tell by the way that Dean slides down the wall like a rag doll that this is not the first time that she has done this to the hunter. Then she walks away and Castiel is alone with an unconscious hunter and his thoughts.

He manages to half stumble and half drag himself to Dean's side, feeling something else tear and give and once more his hand feels something sticky and warm coming through his t-shirt, when he takes his hand away it is wet with blood and he wipes it on the dark, stained material of his jeans. Over the last couple of days he has come to the conclusion that, as powerful as she is, Sawenna has few followers, few that she can trust enough to let into her sanctuary, which is why he and Dean are in a room together now. He hopes that somehow they can turn this to their advantage, even as he grabs Dean's shoulder and shakes it, hard, in an attempt to rouse him.

Dean regains consciousness quickly, much to Castiel's relief, and though he grumbles about a headache and the bruises that he will have in the morning, he is far more concerned with the former angel's condition. For the first time since his fall, or push, Castiel wishes that Dean would take less interest in him and more interest in his own health. For nearly two hours he successfully hides his own injuries, successfully hides the punishment she inflicted upon him for trying to escape, until he moves too sharply again, gasps and almost falls as Dean reaches to catch him and this time the thick red of his blood coats Dean's hands.

"What did she do?" He demands as Castiel is lowered gently to rest against the wall once more, breathing shallow and pained as he wonders whether his injuries will ever truly heal. "Cas, what the hell did she do?"

He tries to play it off as nothing, tries to act like it is nothing more than a little nick and he will be fine once it heals over, he is acutely aware of the fact that Dean knows that he is lying. After a long moment of avoiding Dean's gaze, they finally make eye contact and for the first time in weeks, there is nothing intimidating in Dean's eyes, just a gentle fear that is all for Castiel and has nothing to do with anything else, a plea for trust where the hunter knows that he has done a great many things to hurt his friend and Castiel cannot turn that down, he just shuts his eyes and tips his head back against the wall as Dean carefully lifts the t-shirt so that he can see the damage she has inflicted.

At the other man's gasp of horror, Castiel knows what he has seen. The former angel knows that Dean has seen the mockery of a devil's trap that has been carved into his flesh and he wants to crawl into the brick and plaster from the shame of it all. The shame that he could not stop a demon from cutting into him, the shame that he could not attempt to escape this prison without being caught and tortured. Not even Dean's whispered threats and hissed profanities can make Castiel feel any better. Still, he knows that if they are going to make it out of this, if he is going to live through his last three weeks on this earth, he will need to pull himself together. Which he does, with a little difficulty, he finds that part of him that has been locked deeper and deeper away since he was sent to this world as his punishment, he calls on the part of him that he can hide behind, the strong facade that he maintained at all times as an angel.

"When this is over, Cas," Dean says as he settles next to him, "you and I need to have a little chat." Castiel nods, though he suspects that he knows what this will be about, thinks that this will have to do with the fight that they had and the foolishness behind his actions in staying out after dark. It is almost tempting to tell Dean that he only has three weeks left here anyway, but he does not. All too soon the opportunity for speech is lost again as fresh masculine wails make their way through the building.

Castiel shudders and glances at Dean, sees the way that his eyes seem to stare at nothing and the fists at his sides and knows that the hunter is thinking of Hell. Which is exactly what Castiel is thinking of too and without thinking he drops one bloodstained hand down to rest on the fist next to him, barely notices the shift of the man sat next to him into the scant comfort that he offers with that gesture.

Castiel knows that if Dean is here with him, then Sam cannot be far behind, hopes that this is part of a greater plan though has a suspicion that it is simply the result of a poorly thought out scheme on Dean's part. Either way, he knows that by tomorrow Sam will be here and he will either be free, or too dead to care one way or the other. He settles back, closes his eyes, and tries to turn his mind away from the screaming. He cannot and there is little comfort to be found, even knowing that Dean is sat beside him and that help has to be on the way because right now, all he really wants, is for the screaming to stop, one way or the other.

**Wednesday**.

Sometimes, Sam really hates his brother. Mostly it is times like this, where Dean has run off and done something that can only be classified as really _stupid_ and others it is simply because that is what siblings _do_ on occasions where one gets too much for the other. Gabriel, on the other hand, seems to think that this is just fine and that Dean is far better off where he is. Sam disagrees with that, but there is nothing more that they can do.

Tara went into the building to take a look around almost an hour ago, the advantages of being able to turn into a small fox, Sam supposes, the demons did not even look at her twice. Now, however, Sam is worried that she has gotten herself captured simply because of her single minded desire to get her brother back. In a way, he understands that, as Gabriel surely must, but he worries that her narrow minded plans will ultimately prove to be the death of Dean and Castiel.

When she trots out she has the Impala's keys and the demon killing knife in her jaws, and she is finding it far more difficult to get out than she did to get in for that very reason, Gabriel, however, takes care of the guards at the door and she drops the knife at Sam's feet when she reaches him. The younger hunter averts his eyes as she shifts from fox to human, finds the process more than a little stomach turning even though she explained to both of them that it is less like shapeshifting and more like spirit moulding. Sam supposes that explains the legends about them being fox spirits, but does not comment.

"Chris is dead," Tara's voice is hollow when she speaks. "Bitch cut out his hands and feet, but I don't think she bothered with the sigils like you said she would." Sam nods, eyes sympathetic, face a careful mask as he waits impatiently for her to finish. "Looks like Dean got some good shots in before she got her hands on him, though, she's only got about eight other demons in there."

"Did you find Dean and Cas?" Sam asks, now focussing on his own task as Gabriel turns her attention from somewhere disinterested and internal to the kitsune stood naked in front of them.

"I found them, they're locked in a room on the fourth floor. At least one of them is hurt, though I couldn't tell which one." She gives Sam a long look. "This is suicide." She points out and Sam has to agree, even with an archangel on their side, nine demons are not going to be a walk in the park, add to it the simple fact that one of them is supposed to be the next Lillith and he thinks that this could turn into the kind of blood bath that Dean must have been hoping to avoid by sneaking in on his own.

"Leave Sawenna to me," Gabriel says, attention so wholly on Sam that the younger man thinks she must have been listening into his thoughts the whole time. "You focus on getting our brothers out of there." She smiles, the same soft sort of smile that Castiel used to give people before he fell, the one that says she knows she should smile, but is not sure why, then she holds out her hand. Sam takes it in his and they shake. "This will likely be the last time that I see you, Sam Winchester," she tells him, "you did well." She moves away a little, like she is giving herself space to stretch wings Sam cannot see. "One last thing, tell your brother to stop hiding and just do it." Sam frowns, wants to ask what Gabriel means, but she is gone and he and Tara have to turn their attention to the not so abandoned building.

The woman is now back in the body of a fox and though Sam is dubious about the usefulness of her in this form, Tara has assured him that this is the only way that she is going to be able to fight. They make their way in and Sam's annoyance that Gabriel did not zap all three of them inside lessens when he realises that the arrival of an archangel has drawn much of the attention away from the corridors. Tara leads him to where Castiel and Dean have been locked away.

The sounds of a struggle reach their ears before they round the corner and when the door comes into sight it is open with no sign of demon guards. A quiet growl from Tara alerts Sam to the fact that the struggle is coming from that same room, and that the demons are still in the vicinity. At the sound of Dean's voice raised in defiance and desperation, Sam takes the short distance at a run, pausing long in the door long enough to take in the situation and then slams the knife into the neck of the demon holding his brother.

Dean stumbles into Sam as the, now dead, demon releases him and the younger Winchester sees a streak of brown flash past as Tara buries her teeth into the wrist of the one that has Castiel on the ground. Sam can see that the fallen angel is bleeding from somewhere, that he must have been for the last few days on and off and that whatever the demon has been doing to him has been reopening the wounds. The demon shakes the kitsune off, slamming her across the room and into the wall with a sickening crunch and Sam watches in horror as her body involuntarily shifts in death from fox to woman.

His attention is so drawn to Tara that he flinches when he hears the shot from the colt, is not even surprised that Dean had the presence of mind enough to pull the weapon from the back of his jeans while Sam was distracted. Then Dean has let the gun fall from his fingers and is heaving the demon off Castiel's prone form, checking for pulse and breathing and all the while telling the fallen angel to wake up and open his eyes, that it is all over and he can fix this. Sam wonders if this is what Dean was like when he died.

"Dean, we have to go, let me take him," they heave Castiel to his feet between them and the angel groans, eyes fluttering as he begins to wake, struggling to keep his feet under.

"No, I'll take him, you just make sure you kill any of those sons of bitches that come our way." His brother orders and when Sam thinks about it he is the only one who is in any condition to do any fighting. So he helps Dean get Castiel on his feet enough to get moving and then walks ahead of them as they stumble out of the building.

By some twist of fate, although Sam suspects that it is something more to do with Gabriel than anything, they do not encounter a single demon on their way back to the car and that is something that Sam will always be grateful for. Without the demons on their tail, it is a far simpler matter to get the two of them in the car than Sam had envisioned, though he is surprised when Dean gets into the back to hold Castiel while letting Sam drive back to the motel.

It is less of a surprise when Sam sees the cuts across the fallen angel's abdomen, sees the way that Dean tends to them even though he has injuries of his own to deal with and he has to fight to get his brother to sit back and let him take care of it all. Silently he promises himself that if Dean does not wake up and notice what is right there for everyone to see, Sam is going to kill him himself, because having to watch you brother pine away for a love he does not want to admit to is not the way that Sam wants to spend the rest of his life.

**Thursday**.

Dealing with a demon like Sawenna is hard work and though Gabriel had an entire cohort of her brothers and sisters to help her, a fact that she is _never_ going to tell the Winchesters, she is exhausted. She had decided to use the very fact that both brothers and Castiel had wound up in the same town as the demon that has caused Dean so much strife to her advantage in the hope that the very danger the demon would be towards them would push the two to admit how they both feel.

Her Father disagrees, not that this is a surprise at all. After successfully locking Sawenna back in Hell until whatever time in the future that mankind, demons and angels are all ready for the apocalypse, and in truth Gabriel does not really care when that will be as long as she can avoid taking part in it as much as possible, Gabriel had reported to her Father and been reprimanded for allowing her brother to fall into such danger. Not wanting to have to deal with Michael and Raphael's questioning about Castiel's progress, Gabriel had left to check on the Winchesters and her brother.

That Dean has a concussion is no great surprise, that Sam got out of it all unscathed is not either, though the way that Castiel has been treated is, though if Gabriel were to think about on it, really it should not be. Such injuries are a concern, not because Castiel will not heal, he will in time, but because her brother has less than three weeks until he has to go back to Heaven and Gabriel wants this resolved before the time is up so that Michael and Raphael stay _off_ her back.

She interferes, though she knows that she should not, enters the room while they all sleep and lets a little healing grace spread through him. She may never get rid of the scars, and really they need to be there to remind the pair of them how close they came to losing one another, but she can make it so that there is less pain, so that they wounds will take less time to heal. Then she kneels next to Dean, whispers to him, tells him that he needs to stop dancing and start acting.

A brief press of her fingers to his forehead and the hunter is in a deep enough sleep that he will not wake until morning. Gabriel sincerely hopes that it will be at least thirty years until she sees Castiel again.

_I feel happy, should I feel happy?_

_Artemis  
_


	15. Chapter 15

_I need to get this done, it is proving altogether _far_ too distracting. The reviews I'm getting though are making it all worth while and since I now have a week off work I figure I can make up for all the time I've spent on this._

_Also, rating will probably go up in the next chapter, I wanted it to be this one, but _someone_ wouldn't behave himself, he better for the next one otherwise I think I'll scream._

Chapter Fifteen: Week the Twenty Fourth.

**Monday**.

Dean knows that he needs to talk to Castiel, knows that the conversation with the fallen angel that he promised he would have needs to happen. It is simply that he cannot find the words, he cannot figure out what it is that he wants to say and what it is that he wants to do, just knows that he needs to give the angel a reason to stay and he does not know how to do that. He has so many things that he wants to know, so many questions that he wants to ask, if he could only find the courage to ask them, and Dean is not a man lacking in courage, rather, it is simply something that is not often aimed towards feelings and emotions.

He glances at Castiel, who is sat at the table with the same notebook that he has been working on for the last five and a half months, and Dean really cannot believe that it has been that long, he cannot believe that Cas only had six months here in the first place. They are alone, Sam declared this morning that after three days of looking after them he needed his own space, that he was leaving the room key and taking the car for the day so that he could relax, and Dean did not have the heart to tell him _no_, reasoned to himself that it would just make it that much easier to talk to Castiel if he did not have to worry about getting rid of Sam first. Now he is questioning the wisdom of that idea.

In a way, he almost wants Sam back in the room, as a buffer between him and the awkward silence that he is filling with staring at Castiel, filling with taking in every detail he can about the fallen angel in the event that he the things he cannot find a way to express are not enough to convince Cas to stay, or to find a way to stay and Dean realises that he does not know exactly how this whole thing is supposed to work, does not know if there is something that he is supposed to say or do to make it so that Castiel can stay here with him and, just as he cannot say how he really feels, he cannot find the words to ask either.

The shirt that Castiel is wearing is a black one, the red of the t-shirt he is wearing underneath just visible above the buttons, and it is one that Dean chose for the angel. At the time he had joked that the ladies would fall over themselves to get him when they saw him, the shirt only enhances the paleness of his skin and the dark of his hair, making his eyes stand out like twin pools of brilliance. Except that it is not the ladies that are being bowled over by it, it is Dean, and had he not already acknowledged to himself that he likes Cas as something rather more significant than just as a friend, he would have been out of the room and freaking out about it in a bar somewhere.

He is not freaking out, however, because everything with Sawenna has brought what he feels and what he wants into very sharp focus. What he _feels_ is something that he is not ready to put a name to, not yet, and what he _wants_ is that shirt and all of the rest of Castiel's clothes in a heap on the floor with Cas in his bed, more than once and quite possibly for the rest of his life if he has any say in the matter at all.

"Dean?" At the sound of his name on Castiel's lips and the tilt of the fallen angel's head as he meets the hunter's eyes for the first time in days, Dean startles. He is reminded that the fallen angel only has two weeks left on this earth unless he can find a good enough reason for him to stay, that Cas deliberately kept the time limitation from him, that the whole mess with Sawenna is because he could not face up to his mistake and apologise for it, even if he has not quite decided which one of two possible actions was the mistake in the first place.

"When were you going to tell me?" He asks, because no matter how attractive he finds the angel at this moment he has other things that he needs to confront first.

"Tell you what?" A small frown creases that angel's forehead.

"That you only had six months here," he does not give his friend a chance to respond to that. "Gabriel told me."

"She had no right," Castiel responds, licking his lips and meeting Dean's eyes, the emotion in them takes the hunter's breath away. "I didn't tell you because I had no intention of going back, at least, not soon enough for it to be of concern. It simply wasn't necessary for you to know."

"So, what, one morning me and Sam wake up you're just gone? Is that it?" Dean demands, feeling something inside of him go tight at the thought that Castiel may have just walked away after everything that they have done for him, everything that Dean _feels_ for him. He does not stop to think about the fact that Cas does not know about the thoughts and desires the hunter has been experiencing.

"No, had it come to that, I would have told you, I was simply uncertain as to the best _way_ to tell you." Castiel shakes his head. "Please, Dean, I don't wish to argue about this, I didn't believe it would cause difficulties because I didn't believe I would be returning to Heaven. I am sorry."

"You should have said," Dean tells him and they lapse into a moment of silence. "Look, I'm sorry too, man, ok?" It is not exactly the most graceful of apologies and Dean is certain that he could do a lot better than this but he has more to say and the quicker that he gets it out, the quicker he can get onto working out how he is going to live with himself when Castiel goes back upstairs. "I did a lot of things that I..."

He is cut off by Castiel pressing dry lips against his own and it takes a long moment for him to realise that his fallen angel is kissing him. By the time that his brain has caught up enough for him to respond, Cas is already pulling away and his expression is enough to break Dean's heart.

"Now I know," Castiel tells him, voice low, broken and hollow, and Dean is still trying to piece everything together in his mind, still trying to work out exactly what Cas means and so he does not respond instantly. When Castiel tries to push past him, however, it all begins to make a little bit of sense. He cannot let things happen this way twice, with one of them leaving and the other confused and hurting, he has already made this mistake and when he takes a moment to think about the first time he kissed the fallen angel, he realises that Castiel had wanted it as much as he had, he realises that Cas may have wanted it the whole time Dean was still struggling with the idea.

"Cas, wait," if nothing else he at least has to stop the fallen angel from leaving and he takes hold of an arm and pulls the other man towards him, leans in to kiss him and is not surprised when Castiel pushes him away.

"I don't want your _pity_, Dean," the former angel hisses at him and Dean shakes his head, touches one hand to Castiel's cheek and forces him to meet his eyes.

"I would _never_ do this out of pity," he says, hears Cas scoff at that, knows that under normal circumstances that would not exactly be true. This is the furthest thing from normal, though, at least for him. "Not to you," he clarifies and this time when he kisses Castiel he feels the former angel respond, feels him begin to melt against him and the familiar stirring of a want and a need that he cannot be certain Cas is ready for just yet.

It quickly turns from something that is supposed to be soft, gentle and reassuring, into something deeper, Dean has his hands tangled in the fallen angel's dark hair and he can feel Cas pressing closer to him, can feel his hands fisting in the dark t-shirt the hunter wears and he knows that he should stop this, knows that they need to talk about this whole mess but he does not want to, realises that he has wanted this for so long, has needed this for too long, to be able to stop. Besides, it does not seem like the angel is disagreeing in any way, shape or form and Dean starts to manoeuver them away from the door, away from the middle of the room and towards one of the beds, not really caring which one they get.

Even though Dean is concerned about this going too far, though part of him is screaming that nothing will be _too far_, it would seem that Castiel is not so worried, either that or he simply is not thinking that far ahead, his hands are impatiently tugging the hunter's blue shirt from his shoulders and when the fallen angel moans deep in his throat as Dean presses closer and _feels_ how badly he wants this every thought and concern derails at _want, need_ and _now_. The muffled thud of the shirt hitting the floor is ignored in favour of a breathless gasp from Castiel as Dean turns his attention to the other man's neck, pressing delicate kisses to pale skin while undoing the buttons of the soft black shirt that Cas is wearing.

By the time they both have their shirts off they have found a bed, though which one it is Dean is too distracted to say, and the hunter is pulling Castiel's t-shirt off as he gently eases him down onto the slightly hard surface. He takes a moment to sit back and look at the fallen angel before leaning down to kiss him again, to let him feel just how much the hunter wants this too, hands drifting lower to find the fallen angel's belt.

"_Dean_!" Both startle when Sam knocks on the door and Dean presses his head against Castiel's shoulder as he tries to get his breathing back under control, mumbling curses under his breath as his brother bangs on the door again. Part of him desperately wants to tell Sam to get lost so that he can finish what he has started, and from the look in Castiel's eyes, the other man agrees. Instead he kisses Cas, a chaste kiss that is all too brief.

"We _will_ finish this," he promises, fumbling around for Castiel's t-shirt while yelling for Sam to have a bit of patience. Cas nods, blue eyes wide and vulnerable for a long moment as Dean pushes away from him and the hunter sighs. Even as he opens the motel room door to glare at his brother, the older man is already thinking about how to get rid of him again.

**Wednesday**.

Sam Winchester, Castiel decides, should be locked away somewhere in one of the deepest pits of Hell. Possibly, he reasons, that is a little bit extreme, aside from the fact that the younger man has not left Dean and him alone for two days. Far from insisting on his own room, as he was, he now seems content to share with them. In that time the former angel has managed to steal a few moments a day with Dean, and even though things between them quickly become heated, there is always the necessity they stop, whether because of their location, the return of Sam or the simple fact that they need to get back to him.

Castiel supposes that he should not be completely ungrateful, that he has at least been given a chance with Dean, even if the declaration that he needs has not been uttered. The words, however, are words that he knows do not come easily to Dean and he is just as afraid to utter them, afraid that in doing so he will scare the hunter, drive him away.

Already he can feel things changing around him, can feel the gentle uncurling of a grace bound and hidden for nearly six months. This, he knows, is not enough, these stolen kisses and hands that wander in the dark. It is not enough to satisfy his Father's conditions and it is not enough to satisfy the fallen angel. He wants _more_, he _needs_ more and he is going to get it one way or the other, the only thing that he needs to do is dispose of Sam for a couple of hours.

He knows that Dean is in agreement, knows it in the way that he groans when Sam returns, in his breathless moans when they are alone. What he also wonders is _why_ Sam has suddenly developed this urge to always be around them, to never give them a moments peace where before all of this he was more than eager to leave them alone.

He knows that Sam is aware of how he feels about Dean and he is also aware of the way that Dean feels about him. No matter what words have been exchanged between him and the older hunter, Castiel know that Dean would not allow things to go as far as they have with any other man. He has watched Dean for a long time, saw into his mind seemingly an eternity ago, and he knows that what they have begun between them is a long way from Dean's comfort zone, a long way from his normal taste in bed partners. He knows that there is only one way that Dean would bring himself to _kiss_ him, let alone take it all further, and that would be if Dean really did love him. He hopes so, anyway, and wishes that it would be enough for his Father because the words are never likely to pass Dean's lips.

Sam snores from across the room, neither one of them has told the younger hunter about what he interrupted, and he wishes that he could crawl into Dean's bed and sleep with the hunter's arms around him just once before everything is forced to change. From Dean's sigh on the other side of the room, he suspects that the other man feels the same way.

**Sunday**.

Sam is not stupid and he knows that Dean and Castiel, both, are well aware of that fact. So when he realises that his brother and the fallen angel are trying to keep secrets from him, Sam is more than a little hurt by the thought. He suspects that it has something to do with a conversation that Dean should have had with Castiel two months ago. Thinks it is more than likely to do with the things Cas told him before the whole mess with Sawenna started than anything else.

He knows that if they have talked about it, he should really give them some space and some time to work it all out. Truthfully, however, when it gets down to it Sam is afraid that after a few days Dean will lose interest and hurt Castiel whether he means to or not. It is not that Sam does not have any faith in his brother, it is simply that he knows what Dean is like, knows that when his brother actually loves, and Sam has seen that, he loves hard and he loves fast. Dean has been burnt at least once that Sam knows of and the younger Winchester knows that his brother has guarded himself against that for as long as he has been able, once that guard is down, once Dean realises what he is feeling, Sam knows that he will more than likely shut down everything, because something like that will freak Dean out more than anything.

So, sure, he knows that he is in the way, knows that Castiel wants him out of the room for a good few hours so that he and Dean can finish whatever it is that they had started that other day, it is simply that he does not want either of them hurt. So he is watching them, and he sees more than they think he does. He sees the way they come back from getting lunch flushed, mussed and frustrated, he sees the way that Dean stares at Cas and glares at him. He sees how Cas sighs and hears Dean when he gets up in the night to join the fallen angel in the tiny roll away bed, hears the lie when they say that it was nightmares and nods and accepts it and wishes that they would stop treating him like a child and just tell the truth. Whatever the truth is of course.

Most importantly, however, he sees the love in their eyes when they look at each other, a love that neither one admits to the other and thinks that he sees fear there too. That makes him wonder, the fear, makes him wonder what it is that they are afraid of and if whether, maybe, they are afraid of the same thing. It is strange, to see Dean so in love, to see his brother itching to get his hands on someone and yet holding back for one reason or another.

There is something else, however, something else that they are not telling him and Sam would dearly like to know what that is. There is some reason that they are not talking, some reason that Dean is having more trouble than usual admitting what he feels, and Sam knows that Dean subscribes to the John Winchester family management plan; tell people as little as possible where ever possible and never, whatever you do, admit to any feelings. Sam figures that if his dad were still alive he would cheerfully punch him for messing up his oldest son this way.

They are still on the move, still hunting because the nasty things that go bump in the night do not stop just because Dean is having a crisis of emotion or Castiel is trying to work up the nerve to say what he really thinks or feels. Sam thinks that the hunting is making it all worse, hunting when they have all of these words that they have not said and all of these emotions that they have bottled up that need to be shared.

He has been watching them all week, trying to figure out if this really is a passing phase on Dean's part or if there is actually something more there, something that he will feel for far longer. Sam needs to figure that out, because if he needs to know if splitting up for the night again is going to be the way forward, but they are in town for two more days at least, and to get another room now would appear odd. He half wants to wait until Dean suggests it, half wants to see if Dean will admit to what Sam already knows is going on, even if he does not know how far it has gone yet. Knowing his brother, he will have taken it as far as anything of this nature can go as quickly as he can and maybe it is that thought that tells him that Dean is more serious about this than Sam had given him credit for.

Then again, Sam knows that Dean would only do this if he really felt something genuinely tender for Castiel, perhaps it is that which scares the youngest Winchester the most.

_Sam is an annoying cockblock and at the moment I dislike him immensely. I shall have words, long words, and then lock him in a dark hole if I have to._

_Artemis  
_


	16. Chapter 16

**_Important:_**_ The rating just went up. You all know what that means! Sam was finally a good boy._

_There is definitely at least another one, if not two, chapters after this one, since we still have the six month deadline and certain conditions for Dean and Cas to meet and all, so we are getting very close to the end of this journey.  
_

Chapter Sixteen: Week the Twenty Sixth.

**Wednesday**.

Dean is losing his patience with Sam. No matter how often he hints or how many times he _tells_ his brother to get two rooms, citing anything from the fact that the three of them are falling over each other, to the nightmares that Castiel still has, to the fact that it might just be nice for _Sam, _the younger man still returns with only one key. Sam is ignoring him and Dean has a sneaky suspicion that he knows why.

His brother is not _blind_ after all, so Sam has to know that his older brother and a very _male_ fallen angel have started to actually explore the possibility that there might be a great deal more to their relationship than simple friendship, even though their friendship has never been anything other than complex. Dean knows that Sam is aware that there is more to the situation than he has been told, and that this is more than likely his way of making sure that Dean and Castiel do not start anything that Dean may not be able to finish.

After a week, Dean is all but _dying_ to finish what he started. He thinks that perhaps, rather than hinting, he should just tell Sam the reason, except that this is all so new and so different that he wants to know more about it, wants to figure out how _real_ it is, before he says anything.

Fact of it is, Dean knows that where matters of the heart are involved he is hardly the most reliable, it has been one of the many reasons that he has been so terrified of even _trying_ this, although it falls somewhere _after_ the fact that _this, _whatever it is, is with a guy. At the end of the day, his experience lies in _sex_, which he is spectacularly _good_ at by the way, but with his nomadic lifestyle, relationships have been very few and far between. When he thinks on it, however, he figures that relationships are sort of like friendships, except that sex and love and living in one another's back pockets are involved in it all somewhere.

Given that he and Cas already _do_ live in each other's pockets, he has that one down and out of the way. Add to that the fact that he is fairly certain that the emotion he does not want to name might just well be the _'L'_ one and he is well on his way there. As for the sex part, well, _that_ he would be doing already if Sam would just give him and Castiel a few hours alone, and they will _need_ hours.

Which brings him right back to the problem of Sam apparently trying to protect him from a broken heart and while Dean is grateful for that and all, it is _his_ heart to get broken. He just hopes that if it ever comes to that, Castiel's will not suffer the same fate. So in the interests of discovering just how far he and Cas can take this thing without worrying about Sam interfering, and the fact that Dean is growing more and more aware of the fact that Castiel only has a few days left here on Earth and they have more to discuss than just finishing what they started a week ago, the hunter takes matters into his own hands.

When they reach a motel in Nowheresville, California, Dean has the car parked and is already out and on his way to the office before Sam can stretch himself out enough to move. He does not run to get to the desk first, but he certainly moves towards it at a good pace. The guy behind the counter is a little, heavy set man, balding with gold rimmed glasses perched on the end of his nose. Attached to the wall behind him is a large wooden cross and Dean idly entertains the idea of telling the guy what he intends to do with a certain fallen angel in one of the rooms.

"King and two queens?" The small man asks as he glances at the Impala and the other two men who are leaning against it. Dean smirks and shakes his head.

"Two kings," he says. This last week he has been covertly sharing with Castiel, has been caught twice, but since he has gotten used to having the fallen angel in a bed with him, he has no intention of letting it be otherwise once he get Castiel to himself, the extra bed would be a waste of money. The guy behind the counter scowls, fiddles with his glasses for a moment, then takes Dean's money and hands him two room keys. The hunter wipes the smirk from his face and pockets one as he makes his way back to the car, slapping the key he is still holding into Sam's hand in silence.

When his brother has slung his bag over his shoulder and gone to his door, Dean stops Castiel and shows him the other key silently. The fallen angel's eyes light up in a way that tells Dean that he has just done the completely right thing. He stops himself just short of kissing Cas in the parking lot for all to see, not sure that he is ready for that yet, not sure that he is completely comfortable with it becoming public knowledge just yet.

"Dean? You coming?" Sam shouts as he opens the door and the older man shakes the second key at him.

"Cas and I've got our own room. You go have fun, watch some pay per view, get your geek on," he grins when he sees his little brother scowl, "whatever," and follows Castiel into their room.

The decor, though certainly not the worst that he has ever seen, leaves a lot to be desired. He does not much actually care, however, kicking the door closed and letting his attention fix wholly onto Castiel. His bags fall from his hands with a thud and part of his mind wonders if he had anything breakable in either of them before he turns it off and pulls Castiel into the very kind of heated kiss that he has been wanting to give him for over a week.

He is hard by the time that they break apart, can tell that Castiel is too, and he thinks that he quite possibly just gave Sam enough of a do not disturb hint that this time he might be able to do something about it, little brother in the next room be damned.

"There is only one bed," Cas comments when their eyes meet and Dean grins down at him.

"That's kind of the point, Cas," he chuckles and begins to push Castiel towards the bed, grinning all the while even though he does not break eye contact, letting his hands remove first Cas's heavy wool coat, then his shirt and finally the t-shirt before kissing him again. The fallen angel is no less eager, but Dean has had a week to plan this and he wants to do it all _his_ way, wants to make this special for Cas because this will be his first time, to Dean's knowledge, and that should mean something.

He fumbles with the button and zipper on Castiel's jeans for a moment, hears the fallen angel take a sharp breath as he brushes again hard flesh, then pulls down both jeans and boxers before lowering Cas to the bed and turning his attention to getting boots off feet and the jeans the rest of the way off. He looks up at Castiel from his knelt position on the floor, looks up at the delicate flush on pale cheeks and erection that stands proud from the fallen angel's body and feels a thrill of nerves race through him, an answering twinge from knowing that it is _his_ actions that have brought them to this place.

He moves forward, parting Castiel's legs so that he can get closer, and pulls him down for a kiss, deep, hard and loving and his mind jitters away from the thought. His hands are resting against the soft skin of Cas's waist, thumbs rubbing gentle circles on his hips and the hardness of the body under them is at once startling and right. Cas whines when Dean takes him in his hand, moves his hand slowly up and feels the angel buck into him and he has to press his palm against the answering hardness in his own jeans in an attempt to gain even a small amount of relief.

After a moment he turns his attention to Castiel's throat, suckling on the pale skin even as his hands continue their ministrations, marking the other man before continuing downwards, pressing a kiss into the centre of the anti-possession tattoo and sliding his tongue over first one nipple and then the other, nuzzling the fallen angel back a little as he goes, until he reaches the scars, the lingering design that Sawenna carved onto Castiel's abdomen. He does not bypass it, settling there for a long while, tracing the pattern with tongue and teeth and listening to the way that Castiel gasps for air as he does so.

Eventually he reaches the destination he had in mind, takes a moment to think that he has never done this before, but that he knows what he likes and he cannot imagine that being all that far off what Castiel will enjoy.

"_Dean_!" Castiel's voice is ragged, the hunter's name a hoarse cry and a prayer as Dean takes his erection into his mouth, applying pressure with his tongue and lips and moving to take him further in, moaning at the heavy feel and taste of him and feeling hands in short hair that seem to alternate between trying to get him to stay and trying to pull him away as Cas begins to writhe beneath him. He is close, Dean knows that he is, and so the hunter does not stop, just holds on to Castiel's hips and listens as the fallen angel calls his name as he empties himself into Dean's mouth, then kisses his way up the gently trembling body and licking a path through sweat until he find the angel's lips, kisses him lazily and thoroughly until the shaking stops and he can feel Cas pulling at his t-shirt.

He pulls away, smiles down at the dishevelled appearance of the man beneath him, looking into eyes that are more black than blue now before urging Cas to move onto the bed properly as he pulls off his t-shirt and kicks off his boots. He pauses to grab the small tube he picked up that morning from his jacket and tosses it on the bed before finally releasing himself from the confines of his too tight jeans and he cannot help the moan that follows that, feels the weight of Castiel's eyes on him as all but tears his remaining clothing off.

As soon as he is back on the bed, Cas reaches for him, pulling him into another lazy kiss as long fingers begin to explore his body and Dean realises that he has forgotten how good it is just to be _touched_ by another, let alone anything else and he lets Castiel take the lead now, coming to understand that he may not have done this before, but the fallen angel has been around a long time, he must have picked a few things up over the ages.

He is so absorbed by the gentle exploration of Castiel's fingers and teeth and tongue that he does not hear the click as the small bottle he threw on the bed is opened, is far too distracted by Cas's mouth to notice what his hands are doing until he feels one cool, slick finger press inside him. He shudders away from the intrusion, feels Cas press an open mouthed kiss to the top of his thigh, scraping teeth across the skin and it distracts him just enough to relax him because that is not where he wants Castiel's mouth to be and all the while the angel continues to move and to stretch.

Cas has two fingers inside Dean when he brushes against something that makes the hunter hiss out something dark, dirty and downright obscene all at once, slamming his head back onto the bed and moving his hand so that he can touch himself where Castiel will not, can feel arousal pressed against his thigh as he starts to move restlessly, to groan at the feeling of hands on him and in him, at the way Castiel's tongue is tracing the outline of the hand burnt onto his arm and he knows that he is getting close.

Everything stops then, hands, fingers, tongue, everything, even his own hand is stilled and he opens his eyes to look up at Castiel, feels something pressed against his entrance and sees the question in the eyes of his fallen angel, the request for permission to do this and he cannot speak, cannot trust himself to make any other sound than a moan of utter need and want and _love_, so he reaches up, pulls Cas down and kisses him as the other man eases inside. This is a strange sensation, being filled in this way, and he forces himself to keep his eyes open as Cas begins to move, to find an easy rhythm that Dean can match. What he sees in the fallen angel's eyes sends him over the edge, screaming as everything flashes white and dimly he is aware of Castiel doing the same.

**Thursday**.

Castiel feels the first rays of day light fall across his face and presses himself closer to Dean, turning his head so that he can press a soft kiss to Dean's neck as he feels the man stir beneath him. Without the threat of Sam waking and seeing them together in this way, Castiel feels far more free than he had thought he could as he watches Dean shift once more before easing into a deeper sleep.

There are, he thinks, advantages of remembering millennia of his life, to having watched humans through their existence and as much as he may have scorned their actions as he watched and waited for his orders, he is pleased now with the amount of information he has assimilated over the years. He is also thankful for the internet, and for the fact that Sam expects _Dean_ to look at porn anyway so anything that he finds now will be attributed to his brother.

He thinks about the night before as he feels Dean run fingers up his arm sleepily, thinks about the things he saw in Dean's eyes when they were together. He knows what he saw there, in Dean's eyes, knows how Dean feels and really he does not need to hear the words, not yet, knows that he and Dean would not be here as they are if the hunter did not love him. There is just one draw back, no matter what his Father may know, and Castiel _knows_ that his Father already knows what Dean feels, the fallen angel will not be allowed to remain on Earth with Dean until the hunter _admits_ to his feelings.

"Cas?" Dean is looking at him through sleepy eyes and the fallen angel realises that he has been so distracted by his thoughts that he did not notice when Dean woke up. He leans up and kisses the hunter, the sort of sleepy early morning kiss that they have never shared with each other before. He feels Dean's arms go tight around him and he finds himself wishing that he might never have to leave this bed.

This is nice, lying like this, being here with Dean and not having to worry about moving so that Sam does not work out what might be going on between them, to be alone like this with his hunter relaxed enough that he does not have to keep up his hard front. He would like to stay like this for the rest of the day, except that one of the more inconvenient parts of being human is making itself known and it is with a great deal of reluctance that he leaves the safe haven of Dean's arms, because he knows that when he comes back, Dean will be more awake and the walls will have been rebuilt. He goes into the bathroom anyway, can feel hunger creeping up on him and knows that Dean will feel the same, turns the shower on and does not hear the bathroom door open behind him.

Later, when they have showered together, and got very little actual washing done, they head to Sam's room to summon him for breakfast and check out. It is different now, and Castiel is not sure if that is the warm after glow of sex or the fact that so much of what he wants and feels is out in the open, but it is all relaxed and he feels more free than he has done in months. Sam does not look rested and, perhaps wisely, neither one of them comments on that, although Castiel abruptly remembers how thin the walls of motels very often are and in the back seat of the car he feels himself colour a little. Sam does not say anything on the matter either, though his eyes do dart between his brother and Castiel a great deal more at breakfast.

They leave town in a much more relaxed manner and when Sam suggests a hunt Castiel agrees to it even though he knows that he may not have long left with Dean. The older Winchester does not openly object to the hunt, though when Castiel meets his eyes in the rearview mirror he can tell that it is the last thing that Dean wanted to do this week, and they spend the day on the road managing to grab a few minutes together whenever they stop. This time when Sam gets the room at the motel, he gets two rooms and even though he probably suspects what is going on, he gets a king room for himself and a double queen room for Dean and Castiel. Since neither actually gets all that much sleep, the fallen angel does not mind sharing a smaller bed, he suspects that Dean does not either.

**Friday**.

Sam mumbles something profane and rolls over in bed, pulling one of the pillows with him and jamming it over his ear in an attempt to block out the enthusiastic noises from the other side of the wall. It makes him glad for the few hours sleep that he managed to grab in the car during the drive here, makes him glad that he can send Dean and Castiel out to do the leg work so that he can sleep until they give him a little bit more research information to work with.

The sound of the headboard banging against the other side of the wall dies down and Sam feels himself begin to relax as he wonders why he was trying to fool himself into thinking that by offering them separate beds he might actually not have to hear whether or not his brother has the stamina he is always bragging about having, which he apparently does because the noise starts up again about forty five minutes after Sam had finally started to doze off, which mean that he now has highly unwanted mental images swimming through his too tired mind.

What he really wants, right now, is sleep and while many hunters are nocturnal when they have to be, at this precise moment in time Sam does not have to be anything other than asleep. It is three a.m. he spent most of the night before trying to convince himself that it was most certainly _not_ Dean calling out a certain fallen angel's name on the other side of the wall, that his ears were deceiving him and it was another happy couple. Tonight he does not have that kind of will power and after another long ten minutes of listening to the other side of the wall he reaches the end of his tether, gets up, pulls on some jeans and a jacket and ventures out the door.

For a long moment he glares balefully at the door to his brother and Castiel's room, apparently their personal bedroom olympics are not disturbing any of the other motel patrons, then bangs on the door.

"Some of us are _trying_ to sleep," he snaps through the wood after a long pause where all noise inside had died down to a minimum. There is a long moment of silence and he retreats back to his room, takes off the extra clothes and climbs back into a bed that is still warm against the chill from the night air.

It starts again a few moments later and Sam silently swears to himself that if he cannot get a room at the other end of the motel, from now on he is sharing with them at night. At least that way they cannot keep him awake.

_I told you I would do it, and I did. I've got a good rhythm going now between this and my other thing so it's taking surprisingly little time between chapters!_

_Artemis  
_


	17. Chapter 17

_It's the penultimate chapter and fics are so much harder to wrap up than they are to keep going. We have the epilogue after this and then I don't really know what I'm going to do with myself. If all else fails I'm going to take a look at _Bad Things_ and see if the plot bunny that nagged at me for a while will return to me. Otherwise I'm open to prompts and requests._

Chapter Seventeen: Week the Twenty Sixth

**Tuesday**.

Dean is beginning to get concerned, this is Castiel's last day and the hunter has been trying to make it as good a day as possible for him. This is the end of the sixth month and even though part of Dean wants Cas to go back upstairs with as many good memories as possible, in actual fact he does not want the fallen angel to go back to Heaven, _period_. He knows that Castiel feels the same way on the matter.

So even though he has been focussing on today, on making it good, it is only because he has been asking for the last week _how_ he can make it so that Cas can stay. If the fallen angel could be cryptic, and downright obscure, when he had his grace, Dean realises that it was unrealistic for him to expect the fallen angel to be anything otherwise now that he is human.

"Speak the words that are in your heart," Cas says each time and the words still the questions for a short time, because even though Dean pretends not to understand them, not to get the meaning behind them, in reality he does and he curses the fear that stops him from analysing what he really feels.

The real problem, Dean knows, lies in his abandonment issues and, yes, he _has_ seen enough Oprah, and even the odd Jerry Springer, to know perfectly well what they are. Everyone that he has ever allowed himself to love has betrayed, hurt or left him, sometimes all three. His mom, his dad, his brother, _Cassie_. She was the kicker, the first girl that he really let get under his skin and fell in love with. The one he gave his heart to, _twice_, and both those times she rejected him utterly. He is scared.

Scratch that, Dean is _terrified_ of love. He has seen what it does to people, to dad and mom, to _Sam_. He has seen the crazy, _stupid,_ things that people do in the name of it and he never wants to become that person.

He has reasoned, probably incorrectly, that if he does not label this emotion, the one that has him so frightened that when he thinks about it he can hardly move, he will not suffer the hurt and despair that will come when Castiel is inevitably ripped away from him. He believes that even though what he feels here is far more intense than anything he has _ever_ felt, even though this has completely blind sided him. When he is honest with himself, and he has been much more honest with himself than he usually is the last couple of days, Dean is not sure _how_ his life will continue after Castiel is gone, _if_ it even goes on at all. He cannot stand the thought of living without Cas.

Sam has been watching them both over the last few days like a worried mother, because he was going to work out what was going on here eventually and keeping him awake by having noisy sex in the room next door, who knew that Cas was so vocal in bed anyway, was not going to help keep it all quiet from him. So if he knows that they are having sex, Sam has probably heard them talking about when Castiel is dragged back upstairs kicking and screaming. Dean is sort of grateful for his concern, he also wishes that Sam would stop looking at him with those big pitying puppy dog eyes and just let him wallow in his own misery whenever he has a moment with out Cas.

When they are in bed and Cas is starting to doze, Dean tightens his hold on the fallen angel, like by just having his arms around him and keeping him pressed tightly against him, Dean can prevent Castiel from leaving, like he can stop the fallen angel from getting out of the bed in the morning and if Cas does not get out of the bed, God cannot come and get him. It is a hopeless dream, Dean is more than aware of that, but it is one that he allows himself to cling to all the same.

He feels Castiel nuzzle closer to him in sleep, the gentle movement of hands along his side as the fallen angel looks up at him sleepily, blue eyes clouded with the haze of lingering dreams and something a lot like the feeling that would knock Dean off his feet if he were standing. Cas reaches up and places a soft finger to the hunter's cheek, tracing his face like the fallen angel is trying to memorise every detail.

When they kiss it is almost delicate, the feather light caress of lips and the languid teasing of tongues, and he thinks that such a kiss is the perfect contrast to the weight of Castiel on his chest and the dance of his own fingers along Cas's back. They continue like this, tender touches and firm hands, small noises of pleasure and the chant of names breathed between kiss swollen lips and filling the air as prayers and promises, declarations that neither can utter.

They lie there together after, breathless and satiated, sweat and other things cooling on their skin, and Dean thinks absently that they should go and get cleaned up, but he cannot bring himself to move, does not want to let go of Castiel or lose the warmth from the other man's body. So as sleep drifts in to claim them both, he thinks about the words that he cannot say and the feeling that he will not name and does not know how to express.

What it comes down to, is the words, those three words that so many women put so much faith in, and they just do not seem like enough. They do not seem like they will ever be enough and he wishes that he had the strength to just say them.

**Wednesday**.

Castiel knows that whether he gets dragged back up to Heaven today or if he gets to spend the next forty years here on this Earth, he will never get tired of waking up in Dean's arms. He feels a tug deep inside when he thinks that this might be the last time, when he hears the calls of his brothers and sisters and feels the heavy presence of Raphael in the parking lot outside.

Over the last several weeks he has been able to feel the gentle unfurling of his grace, the gentle awakening of that part of him that has been lying dormant and completely out of reach for the last six months. It is there now, just on the edge of his awareness and he finds that rather than feeling relief that it is once more within his reach, he feels only sorrow. The very fact that it has been brought into his reach, even before the arrival of his Father and brother to take him to the place that they want him to call home once more, as a temptation makes him feel like little more than a pawn in a much larger game.

He ignores the calling for as long as he can, pressing his back closer to Dean and letting his eyes slide closed until it is more of an order than an offer and he sighs, sliding out of the bed and pulling on the clothes that he and Dean discarded the night before. If he is going back to Heaven then he sees little point in washing and if he does not go back up there, then he will want to celebrate and there is no point in putting on clean clothes for that.

Raphael is stood in the empty parking lot and he is alone, face expressionless, he is utterly immobile. It is almost like he does not know that he should move at all and Castiel supposes that he does not because that was something that it took him some time to pick up himself. Dimly he is aware of his disappointment that his Father did not come himself.

"Are you ready to come home, little brother?" Raphael asks and there is nothing inviting in his tone, no emotion or sign that the archangel has ever had an independent thought or feeling. After so long surrounded by humans who colour everything that they do and say with their thoughts and emotions, Castiel is even less eager to return to Heaven.

"It is not my home any more, Raphael," he responds because Castiel knows, with absolute certainty, that his place is here, that he belongs here with Dean and with Sam. Dean has made it clear time and time again over the last two weeks that he loves the fallen angel, with every touch and every kiss, every stolen moment together during the day and through the long nights. "I am not going."

"You are graceless, you failed to meet the terms our Father laid out for you, you have no choice other than to return home," Raphael is beginning to sound a little annoyed and Castiel wonders if he has struck a nerve with his refusal to obey.

"He doesn't want to go, Raphael," Dean states from behind him and internally Castiel is not sure if he should be cheering or cringing, does not know when Dean realised that he was missing but that it cannot have taken long.

"You do not get a say," the archangel decrees, sparing a dark glare for the hunter, and Castiel raises a hand, indicating to Dean that he should be silent and not get involved. He knows how Dean feels for him, knows that his Father knows it in every action that Dean has taken and every silent whisper of Dean's heart.

"I think I do," Dean snaps, ignoring the silent gesture from Castiel and the fallen angel feels his stomach knot. Raphael has never been the most understanding of the archangels, has never been the most open or forgiving and Dean's open defiance of him will not be viewed favourably.

Raphael sneers at Dean, power crackling around him. "Do you really believe so?" He asks. "What reason could you possibly give?" The challenge is laid down and Castiel knows that this will be the point that Dean goes silent, that the hunter loses the ability to speak his mind. Sure enough Dean remains silent and Castiel takes the opportunity to take control of the situation back, as much control as he ever had.

"Raphael, please," Castiel cuts in.

"But you see, brother, how pointless your argument is. He cannot even admit to it before you and I alone," except that Castiel knows that Dean is not a man capable of using words, not in this way, he plays his feelings close to his chest, bottles them deep within him until they threaten to burst out of him. He carries them as though they are his own burden, as though they are the world upon his shoulders and Castiel feels a great deal of empathy for him in the matter. "I think it is better that we leave now."

"He's not going," Dean snaps and as much as Castiel knows that he needs to hear the actual words in order for all the terms to be met, he wishes that this outburst would be enough.

"I have no choice, Dean," Castiel whispers, touches the hunter's cheek with fingers that shake with a fear and a sorrow that he does not know how to express, only that it stops him from speaking properly, stops him from telling Dean all that he wants to say as Raphael watches them impassively, neither triumphing nor commenting on the validation of his words.

"No," Dean hisses, grasping at his arms and pulling him close. "Stay, Cas, I need..." and he kisses him, hard, desperate, afraid and Castiel returns the kiss with no less determination as he feels Dean's hands slide up. He can imagine how this looks to Raphael, this desperate scene is reminiscent to him of another time when _he_ was the one hunting and threatening and Anna was the one to be taken from the only thing she had ever wanted. They break apart, although Dean does not move his hands, his thumbs stroking Castiel's cheeks and drawing the soft rasp of stubble where the fallen angel has not shaved. "I love you," the hunter whispers, "I just wanted..." and this time it is the fallen angel who cuts him off, the fallen angel who initiates the kiss.

"I love you too, Dean," he tells him as he hears Raphael leave, feels the grace that has been uncurling within him return to the untouchable ball deep within him. Their lips meet again and it takes a long moment for Dean to realise that they are alone again, that Raphael is gone and they are declaring their love for one another for all to see. "I am allowed to stay," Castiel tells him and Dean frowns, obviously confused by the sudden change in circumstances.

"How?" He asks, not questioning the veracity of that statement, simply accepting it.

"Love," Castiel tells him, does not need to say more because he can see the way that all the pieces fall into place in Dean's mind by the way that his eyes light up and the smile that gradually forms, one that Castiel recognises as the smile that Dean gets when he has a particularly good piece of pie, a smile he has directed at Castiel on a number of occasions before the angel even knew what it meant, one that is seen all too rarely.

"So how long do you have this time?" From his tone it is almost as though Dean expects Castiel to be given a finite amount of time, expects the fallen angel to be taken from him and that the next time there will be no reprieve, no chance at winning more time, that Raphael or Gabriel will turn up one morning, or evening, and drag Castiel away.

Castiel shrugs. "Thirty or forty years, how much longer are you intending on living?" He sees Dean smile as he is pulled close for another kiss and he decides that no matter how long Dean may live, how ever long he may live after this, he will never get enough of the hunter's kisses.

**Thursday**.

Sam knows that something has been going on between his brother and his brother's fallen angel, and he makes no mistake there, Castiel is most definitely _Dean's_ angel whether he has his grace or not.

Two days ago, Dean was all but tearing his hair out, Sam is even half certain that he has seen some grey start to come through with the stress that Dean has been putting himself under. Neither Dean or Castiel would tell the younger Winchester what has been going on, neither would say why Dean has been freaking out or why Castiel seemed so frightened and sad but Sam suspects that it has something to do with the fact that Cas neglected to mention the possibility that he had a time frame on this whole punishment.

When the pair of them finally emerged from their room the day before, the young hunter knew that something had changed. Of course, this was mostly because Dean had his arm around Castiel and the fallen angel was leaning into his embrace, but there were other little clues, other little signs that told Sam that something has most definitely changed for his brother. there is a lightness there now, that Sam has missed seeing over the years, a contentment and a wonder, like Dean is amazed that he has gotten this lucky.

He resolves to make sure that he books the motel rooms from now on given that he is going to be in a car with a smug couple for the rest of his natural life. As much as he grumbles about it internally, however, Sam finds that he cannot be upset about it, cannot be jealous, because with everything that Dean has been through in his life, Sam thinks that he deserves to be happy and he hopes that Cas will be the beginning of that.

He does take a moment when he is alone, Dean and Castiel are at the other end of the motel where Sam cannot hear them, to think about all the things that might go wrong from here on in. He thinks about the possibility that what ever it is the pair of them have done has only given them a temporary reprieve, thinks about the possibility that they might have a fight, that they might break up for one reason or another. Then he thinks about the very real possibility that one or other of them might be killed on a hunt. He knows that Dean would not cope well with that, is not sure how Castiel will deal with it.

What he does know now, however, is that no matter what choice he now makes for his future, Dean will not be alone. For some reason, no matter all the other possible futures that Sam can bring to mind, that one sticks out the most in his mind, that Dean will not be alone if Sam wants to do his own thing.

He sleeps more soundly that night than he has in years.


	18. Chapter 18

_It's done, finished, over with and I'm grieving a little bit. This fic has been a driving part of my life for the last couple of months and I'm going to miss it. _

_I just want to send out my thanks to all the people who read, everyone who reviewed, all the alerts and favourites and the phenomenal amount of support I've had from everyone who has been reading. I never imagined this fic would get the number of hits and reviews that it has. (Listen to me, I sound like I'm winning an oscar or something)._

_Also, massive thank yous out to Punky (as always) for letting me bounce things off her when I get really stuck, believe me this fic would never have happened without her constant support.  
_

Chapter Eighteen: Epilogue.

**Twenty Eight Years**.

For twenty eight years Dean is watched over by an angel, in the very literal sense because even if he does not have his wings anymore, Dean always thinks of Castiel as his angel. The very fact that Cas has had his wings clipped so that he can stay with Dean has only made the hunter love and cherish him more over the years.

As time passes they learn that relationships take a great deal of work, even one such as theirs. The first few months, as Dean expected, are blissful. Both are so happy, so overjoyed that they get to be together, that agreements are easily reached and arguments are few and far between, resolved quickly and quietly. Both men, however, are stubborn and even with Sam around a lot of the time in the early days to act as something of a buffer, they still have some fights.

For the first time, Castiel discovers the effectiveness of slammed doors and raised voices and Dean rediscovers it. They are together when they discover the joys of angry sex and make up sex, of frantic, desperate sex and the lazy sort of early morning sex that both come to agree is their favourite.

All the while, Sam is there and that is something that Dean is profoundly grateful for, not sure how he would have been able to face up to some of the early fights without the support of his younger brother. He suspects that when Sam rolls his eyes heavenward he is actually praying for either strength or a two by four and when he is alone, Dean sometimes asks God to make sure that Sam gets it. Sam gives Dean and Castiel something to focus on that is not hunting, research or each other, and Dean thinks that is what stops him from burning out the relationship before it has really begun.

That all changes when they meet Caroline Davey.

Caroline is tall, blonde and athletically built, a high school teacher in a town and on a job that they would usually forget with ease but for the fact that for Sam it is obviously love at first sight. It is the same for her as well and for nearly two years Dean watches his younger brother struggle with a long distance relationship. Finally, after he and Castiel have been together for five years, Dean tells his brother to stay with Caroline for as long as he likes and to call when he wants to go back on the road.

Sam never makes that call. He stays in touch, certainly, and he puts them on track for hunts, but otherwise he gets himself a job in a local bar, lives with Caroline and builds himself a life that is halfway normal. Dean and Castiel stop in whenever they can, and stay to take care of the house for two weeks, four years after they went their separate ways, when Sam and Caroline go on their honeymoon. For the hunter and his angel this is something of a vacation.

Things go slightly wrong about three years later, and when asked about it by Sam and Bobby, Dean will never be able to say exactly what they were arguing about, just that he and Cas had a big fight on the way to see Sam after a hard job and he had done something stupid. He had stopped the car at the side of a road and told Castiel to get out.

Even though he was angry with Castiel, Dean was still certain, at the time, that this would go the same way that their other more vicious fights had gone, with one or other of them calling a few hours later and apologising, Dean would collect Cas from where ever he had wound up and they would have make up sex in either the first motel they came to or the back of the Impala if they could not wait that long. This time is different, this time Castiel does not call and it takes Dean a day to figure out why, to find the cell phone that belongs to the fallen angel in the pocket of the jacket he had removed and tossed onto the back seat.

Dean spends three weeks searching for Cas in the area he left him, hoping that he will hear from his lover soon, that Castiel bothered to memorise his number so that he could get in contact if something happened to his phone.

The hunter does not hear from Castiel for eight months, not through lack of trying, and he learns later that it was in part due to the fact that Cas was genuinely hurt beyond measure at the words Dean had flung in his direction, and the rest of it was simply down to Castiel not being sure that Dean would even want to hear from him. They find each other through sheer luck, Sam telling Dean about a job in a town where Castiel just happened to be working the same job. Neither remembers what they fought about, just that words they exchanged were more harsh than they used to be. They know how to really hurt each other and neither is pleased with that outcome.

Once Castiel is back in the car with him, Dean realises just how much has been missing from his existence in the last months. He resolves never to fight in such a way with Cas again. This does not mean that they do not fight, that in itself is a given, every couple does and every healthy couple will for the rest of time, it simply means that in the back of both of their minds they can remember a time when they were apart and eaten away with guilt and sorrow and shame at the things that they flung at each other.

Sometimes, Dean has noticed, he will find Castiel in a church. Generally these are the small ones in little towns that are left unlocked late into the night because no one really cares, because the community is too entrenched enough in it's religion, even if it does not completely believe it, and there is too little of actual value in the church to _bother_ with locking it. He only asks why Cas goes there once and the heart worn look he receives in return stops him from ever asking again. He knows that Castiel does not want to willingly go home, just as he knows that Heaven was still Cas's home and he had been cut off from it for over a year even before he fell. Dean thinks the fallen angel does it so that he can feel close to his family for a while, close to his Father, and does not bring it up after.

When Mary Louise Winchester is born, Dean and Castiel are in the thirteenth year of their relationship, Dean is in his mid forties and Castiel looks like he is probably somewhere in his fifties even if the soul inside the shell is infinitely older. It takes them three months to leave town, three months where Castiel discovers what it is like to hold a child in his arms for the first time, something that Dean learnt at age four, and where neither uncle wants to leave for fear of missing something. The nursery is discretely decorated with protection symbols from across the world, from across even time, from the day of Mary's birth and Castiel makes certain that there is a net all around the house to protect not just from demons, but from angels too. When they do finally move on and return to the lives they have built for themselves, it is with a heavier heart, the gradual aches of increasing age beginning to make themselves known.

Dean is forty nine when he and Castiel go to a church in deep south Louisiana one night, the door unlocked, the building empty but for the lingering presence of God that Cas swears he can feel. This is one of those things that Dean does not question, one of those things that he accepts because if anyone has a right to feel the vague remnants of his deity's passing by, it is Castiel. This is the anniversary of the day that Castiel was allowed to stay, eighteen years that they have been together and while it seems an odd time for this to be done, that maybe they should wait for the twenty year mark, this is the time that they have chosen. In the silence of that church, without the presence of pastor or witness other than the faint sensation of eternal eyes upon them, both make quiet promises. It is not romantic, it is not legal and it is not sealed in blood, but to them it is necessary, a confirmation of that which they have always known.

When they leave the building, closing door behind them and pausing for a moment so that Dean can catch Castiel in a heated kiss that is all promise and love, moonlight catches off of silver bands on their fingers, silver that has been engraved with symbols of love and protection. They are together.

Nine weeks later they get a call from Sam. Bobby has been found dead in his home, the old hunter was in his late seventies and this was a death by natural causes, rare among their kind. Dean and Castiel make it to South Dakota in time for the funeral, a hunters passing with salt in the coffin. As Bobby burns they all take a moment to think of the people that they have lost over the years, John, Jo, Ellen, Rufus, even Eden was killed during a gas station robbery gone bad. Now Bobby, one of the few remaining hunters alive who knew that truth about the dark time when Lucifer ran free. They stand in silence, Dean with his arm around Castiel's shoulders and tears shining freely in his eyes and Sam holds his obviously pregnant wife and daughter. They are all the family that Bobby had left and they intend to make the old hunter proud.

Bobby leaves Dean and Castiel the bungalow and for a long time Dean debates simply selling it and continuing to move on, but he and Cas are getting older now and the hunt still has not caught up with them, so one day they are going to need a place to go when they have to stop. They keep the bungalow, filled with old books and relics, make ammunition with fingers that gradually become a little more unsteady over the years and Castiel gets them a name as the 'go to' people in the hunting community, with his seemingly endless knowledge of the supernatural underworld and Dean's ability to dig a hunt out of anywhere.

Dean always thought that he would not live long enough to grow old with Castiel, to find an old bungalow to live in where Sam and Caroline can bring Mary, Richard and Emily to look around their crazy old uncle's home. Dean likes having the children around, sometimes wishes that he and Cas could have had their own, but for the fact that they are hunters through and through and there should never be a child in a hunting family.

Dean likes to watch his lover, in the evenings when the fallen angel still pours over the journal he started to keep twenty eight years ago in the weeks after he first fell. The hunter looks at the book from time to time, sees symbols and sigils for many things that he had thought lost and forgotten, sees the exorcism for succubi and incubi in there somewhere near the beginning, though mostly it is organised, and remembers Castiel telling him that it would likely never be finished in this life time, not even if he spent every minute of every hour of every day of his time on Earth working on it. Part of Dean feels sorrow at the wealth of knowledge that will one day be lost, a larger part of him just decides that it is time to distract his fallen angel and distract each other they do.

By the time Dean is fifty nine they have almost completely retired from the hunting part of their world, Cas looks like he is pushing his mid sixties and though Dean still loves him as though he only discovered the feeling yesterday, the hunter still fears the day that his fallen angel passes from this life, it never occurs to him that he might go first because that is not that way that his life has played out. Nor does he think of the remote possibility that they might die together.

**Year Twenty Eight: Thursday**.

Dean is driving them back from California, from visiting his brother and sister-in-law as Castiel half dozes in the passenger seat. The fallen angel has had a trying day, from the moment he woke to this one, on a road somewhere between the place he now calls home and the place Sam lives.

He did not wake as he usually does, with Dean arms wrapped around him and the hunters sleeping breaths gentle against hair that is still thick, but is now steel grey. Instead he woke to the feeling of Dean's hands shaking him, to the worried calling of the hunter's voice and the feel of tears still wet on his face. He is still half sobbing when he sits bolt upright, when he pulls Dean into a kiss that is meant to reassure him of the fact that the hunter is still alive rather than the gentle, warm, morning greeting that he usually gives.

When Dean asks him about the dream, however, Castiel does not know what to say, does not know what to tell him because the details and the images, brilliant as the once were, are fading from his mind. All he remembers is the blinding flash of crimson and the warm feeling of blood on his hands and body. It could be a memory, it could be a standard nightmare, but somehow Castiel is not convinced of that, and he knows that Dean is not either.

It is when he gets into the shower that he understands the full implications of the dream, when he feels the sudden uncurling of something buried for so long that at first he thinks that he is imagining it, imagining the warmth, the power and the whisper against his mind. He ignores it, goes to breakfast with the man that he loves and tries to bury the lingering memory and the overwhelming fear that it brought to his mind in some deep dark place. Every time he does, he brushes against something else, something that is not human, not mortal, _not supposed to be there_.

Dean notices, of course he does, they have been together for twenty eight years and it is not a surprise that Dean can read him like an open book. This does not mean that they talk about it, not here, not on the road, they have learnt all about having arguments in the car and how quickly they get out of hand when one or the other of them cannot walk away, and usually it is Castiel who does that, the only one of the two of them who does not care about walking away from a battle.

By the time it is dark, Castiel knows that he cannot ignore the grace that has been returned to him any longer, even if it is not blanketing out all the emotions that he has been given to feel over the years that he has been human. He turns to tell Dean and that is when he sees the truck speeding in out of nowhere, lights brilliant and there is no time to stop, no time to move, all he can do is wrap his arms around the man that he loves and close his eyes against the brilliant white that fills the car and the sharp agony that shoots through him until, for a long moment, there is nothing.

His eyes are still closed, however, and when he opens them he recognises the place before him, though he has not been here fully for nearly thirty years. He recognises the faces of his brothers and sisters too and he knows that he is home. Castiel looks at his arms, sees them wrapped around the soul of Dean Winchester, a soul that now burns with a grace as brilliant and as joyous of his own and he smiles, he laughs, and the halls of Heaven still at the sound. Then they are alone, and Castiel wants to explain, to tell Dean what has happened because his lover is clearly confused and more than a little concerned, but they are not as alone as they thought, because Castiel turns his head as they both stand, hands still clasped, and sees his Father watching them.

"Welcome home, my sons," he tells them both and Castiel remembers only the indescribable beauty of his face, the love of his voice as he looks at them both, an angel that would be human, and a human who stood firm in the face of the joined wrath of Heaven and Hell.

"Father," Castiel breathes and hisses a silent thank you, a habit that he knows it will take a long time to break, for the fact that Dean remains silent, still to shocked to do anything Castiel thinks. "Where are the archangels?" He asks it because it is rare for his Father to speak to any of them without one or other of the three at his side.

"Learning," comes the response. "I cannot have archangels who do not know what it is to be human leading my children to paradise. So they are being educated, as are many of your brethren and subordinates, and so shall it continue until I feel they understand."

"Cas, what's he talking about?" Dean hisses and though his body may have aged, Castiel only sees the beauty of the soul he fell in love with.

"Michael, Raphael and Gabriel have been made human. My Father has left the legions of angels without leadership." Castiel supplies and he hears a joy filled sound from his Lord.

"Of course not, my two new archangels are stood right here. I believe you have some work to do."

Fin.

_Am I in trouble now? This was the way that it was always going to end, I've had this whole part planned and waiting from day one. Will you click the little button? One last time?_

_Artemis  
_


End file.
